


What We Love

by tessathompsonsbitch



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Finnpoe - Freeform, Gay Poe Dameron, Lesbian Rey, Lesbian Rey (Star Wars), M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, like SUPER gay poe dameron, reyrose - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-06-28 00:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 41,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15696774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessathompsonsbitch/pseuds/tessathompsonsbitch
Summary: After the Battle of Crait, everything about being in the Resistance is shaky and uncertain. Rey, Rose, Poe, and Finn want to fight for the movement, to build it back up again—of course they do. But certain complicated and sometimes downright frustrating feelings keep demanding their attention and getting in the way. They try to stay focused on their mission to return peace to the galaxy, but that's hard to do when they're still searching for peace in their own hearts.





	1. Chapter 1

Part I

 

 

Rey leaned against the doorframe, watching Finn’s back. He sat at Rose’s bedside, exactly where he had been for every second of the last two days. Rose had stirred and mumbled something, once, and now he was convinced she would wake up at any moment. When she did, Finn said, he didn’t want her to be alone and confused.

That was the thing about Finn. He would never abandon the people he cared about. Rey loved that about him, but she was also beginning to worry. He hadn’t eaten or slept at all. Rey couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think he had used the refresher either.

“I know you’re there,” Finn said without turning to look at her.

“Damn,” Rey said. “What gave me away?”

There were no chairs in the room other than the one Finn occupied, so she perched on the end of Rose’s bed.

“You breathe too loud,” Finn said. “But also, I’m just really good. Nothing gets past me.”

He looked at her, finally, and smiled a weary smile.

“How is she?” Rey asked.

Finn sighed. “The same.”

Rey looked at her feet. She knew Finn didn’t want to hear what she was about to say. Poe had already tried talking to him, and if he didn’t listen to Poe, he wouldn’t listen to anyone.

“Torturing yourself isn’t going to help her,” she said quietly.

Finn slammed a fist against his knee.

“Would everyone stop telling me that?”

“We’ll stop when you stop,” Rey said.

Finn rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Look,” he said. “I’m just being a good friend. I would do the same for you or Poe or anyone else on this damn ship.”

They had been stuck aboard the Millennium Falcon with the meager remains of the Resistance for two weeks now, searching for a new home. Even those who had never met before this voyage were beginning to feel like family.

Throughout those long weeks, Rose had been unconscious in this bed.

“Finn,” Rey said, and she planted a hand firmly on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

Finn shook his head.

“Poe already gave me that line, too. The thing is, it’s actually one hundred percent my fault. If I hadn’t pulled that stupid stunt, she wouldn’t have had to save me.”

Rey didn’t bother telling him that his attempt to save every life in the Resistance hadn’t been a stupid stunt or that he was incredibly brave or that she was proud to call him her friend. They had been through this a hundred times at least. And he had been through it with Poe, and with Leia, and he would probably go through it with Rose when she finally woke up. He couldn’t forgive himself yet, and that was something he needed to work through, but it wasn’t what mattered to Rey right now.

“Can you just try to get some sleep?” she said. “Or eat something? Please.”

“I am not leaving her,” Finn said.

Rey focused on his bloodshot eyes beneath their drooping lids, on the way his cheeks were already less full than they had been two days ago.

“Just for a second. It won’t hurt anything,” Rey said.

“She’s a hero!” Finn shouted, suddenly bursting out of his chair and pacing across the room. “A goddamn hero! And everyone’s already forgotten about her! Well, not me. I’m not gonna let her feel like no one cares.”

Rey watched him raging around the cabin and wished she could make him see that he had already done enough. For all of them. But she couldn’t make him see something he didn’t want to. All she could do was make sure he took care of himself, at least a little bit.

“I’ll stay with her,” Rey said. Finn stopped pacing and looked at her, his brow furrowed. “You go get some rest and some food, and I’ll be right here. For as long as you need.”

Finn considered the offer.

“She doesn’t know you,” he said finally.

“Sure she does,” Rey said, smirking. “I’m told you talk about me all the time, to everyone?”

Finn rolled his eyes, and Rey practically felt the warmth in his cheeks from across the room.

“Did Poe say that?” he asked.

“He did. And I told him you never shut up about him, either.”

“Great,” Finn said. “That’s great.”

Rey stood and looked him in the eye.

“Finn. Go. If she wakes up, I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

He wandered over to stand beside the bed, looking down at the person who had risked her life to save him. After he had risked his life to save everyone. He didn’t speak.

“She would want you to take care of yourself,” Rey said.

Finn nodded. “Yeah. Ok. You’re sure you’re ok staying with her?”

“Of course. Like you said, she’s a hero. It’s the least I could do.”

Finn nodded again. He clapped a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you, Rey.” He smiled, and so did she.

“Now,” Rey said. “Poe’s in the cockpit. Go tell him you’ve agreed to take a break before he bursts a blood vessel.”

With Finn gone, Rey settled into the room’s singular chair. She looked down at the sleeping figure before her.

She hadn’t even met Rose yet, not really. But she had heard Finn’s stories about her so many times, she felt as if she might as well have been there with them on Canto Bight and Snoke’s ship and Crait.

Rey wasn’t quite sure how to feel about her, she thought, as she watched Rose’s chest rise and fall beneath the blankets. Rose was brave and kind and resolute, obviously. Rey admired all those things. But there was something else that nagged at the back of Rey’s mind every time Finn told one of his stories. Maybe it was just the fact that she had electrocuted Finn on their first meeting. Maybe it was something else. Rey couldn’t put her finger on it, and she couldn’t talk about it, either, or Finn would explode on her. He had been Rose’s greatest defender since Crait.

And that was another thing. He was a little…too defensive sometimes. Finn was oblivious, but Rey saw the tension in Poe’s jaw, the empty stare, when Finn waxed poetic about Rose’s valor. Of course, it wasn’t Rose’s fault if Finn liked to talk about her, but there was more to it than just talk. There was the kiss that everyone knew about but was too afraid to mention. When Rey, Finn, and Poe were together, they tip-toed around it like a land mine.

Rey understood why Rose had done it. Finn was the most caring person in the galaxy, based on her own experience. Romance had never really appealed to her, but if it had, she would’ve wanted to be with someone like Finn, too. And Poe definitely understood. He understood too well. That was the problem.

So, things were complicated with Rose. Even though they hadn’t met.

Rey shoved all of that out of her mind. It was silly, really, focusing on personal drama when they were homeless and desperate, floating through the galaxy on a ship with only enough rations and fuel for another few weeks, if they were lucky. Besides, they had all almost died so many times just in the past few days. Why were they wasting time worrying about who kissed whom?

Rose stirred, startling Rey out of her thoughts. She had taken Finn’s place by the bedside three hours ago, and Rose hadn’t so much as twitched her mouth. Was this a good sign or a bad one?

“I wonder…” Rey mumbled. A thought had come to her for the first time.

_The Force._ Maybe she could use it to wake Rose. She hadn’t seen it done before, but she had also never seen someone perform a Jedi mind trick or wield a lightsaber before she did those things. Did them well. She usually discovered what was possible by following her hunches and seeing where they took her. Rose was coming closer to consciousness all on her own, anyway. All she needed was a push.

Rey closed her eyes, took several deep breaths. She felt her body melt away as her mind leaned in to the ever-present hum and glow of the galaxy enveloping her. So much flooded into her, collided with her: the chaotic heat of the Falcon’s engines, the void of space pressing in on her, even the incomprehensible voices of the stars that glided past in an instant as she flew through hyperspace.  Rey felt the strain as plainly as if her mind had been a muscle as she shut it all out and narrowed her focus. The Falcon. The makeshift med-bay.

As soon as she focused on what was right in front of her, her whole being was filled with an energy so strange and warm and bright that she almost couldn’t stand it. She felt she would burn into nothing if she didn’t get away from it, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t open her eyes or even think about anything else but that energy. It pulled her to itself, forced her to topple headfirst into its arms. She felt even more full, even more overwhelmed, than when everything in the galaxy had been calling for her attention.

Surrounded by that horrifying, glorious energy, Rey lost all sense of herself. She faded into the light and heat, became one and the same with them, slowly at first, reluctantly, and then hungrily, eagerly, as if she had been waiting only for this her whole life.

Just as she was saying goodbye to her old life and embracing her new existence as part of this huge and wonderful and terrible thing, Rey remembered her purpose for coming here in the first place. As soon as she remembered, a soft voice she had never heard before whispered in her ear.

_Rey._

Her eyes slammed open, and she was back on the Falcon, in the med-bay, in her own body. After a moment of disorientation, she realized that she was panting, gasping down lungfuls of air as if she hadn’t breathed in days.

She wasn’t the only one.

Rose was sitting up in bed across from her, panting just as desperately. Rey felt something in her hands then, something soft and warm that she grasped so tight it must have been on the verge of combusting. She looked down to find Rose’s hands in her own, both of their knuckles bleached pale white from the strain of holding on to each other.

As Rey came back to reality and remembered her life, bit by bit, she remembered a few important things. She and Rose had not actually met yet. And holding hands with strangers was not a normal thing to do.

She pulled her hands away from Rose, but she was still too amazed and confused to be embarrassed. Or more accurately, she was more focused on being amazed and confused than being embarrassed, for the moment at least.

“Did you feel that?” she asked breathlessly.

She looked up at Rose and saw her eyes open for the first time. They were deep and soft and brown, but they were also brighter than Rey could’ve ever imagined. Not that she had imagined them at all. That fact seemed strange. After looking at those eyes for one second, Rey felt like she had been thinking about them for ages.

“Feel what?” Rose croaked in a voice that had gone unused for two weeks.

It was much scratchier than it had been a moment ago, but Rey would recognize that voice anywhere. It was the same voice of the all-encompassing energy. But what did that mean?

She shook her head, trying to clear away the haze that still lingered after her unexpectedly life-altering journey through the Force. Rose hadn’t felt anything. She had been in a coma, and Rey had woken her up, just like she had planned. And the rest of it…Rey had no idea what that was about, but she would have to figure it out later. Right now, she needed to take care of Rose.

“Nothing. Never mind,” Rey said. She took a deep breath and put on a smile. _Normal_ , she thought. _She’s probably freaked out enough already, she doesn’t need you making it worse._

“I’m Rey,” she said.

Rose’s eyes lit with recognition.

“Rey? _The_ Rey?” Rose said. “I’ve heard so much about you, you have no idea. You’re basically my hero.”

That was the last reaction Rey had expected. In her mind, from all the stories Finn had told, Rose was stoic and serious and noble. And now she was calling Rey her hero?

“Listen, Rose, a lot has happened, and—”

“Hang on,” Rose interrupted. “You know my name? Rey knows my name?”

“Of course. Finn’s told me all about you.”

At that, Rose’s face dropped.

“Finn,” she said. “Is he all right?”

“Yes, thanks to you,” Rey said.

“Is he here?” Rose paused, looked around herself at the stark metal walls. “Also, where is here?”

Rey felt the need to explain on Finn’s behalf, to defend him.

“He’s here. In fact, I practically had to pry him out of this room just so he would go get some sleep. He didn’t want you to wake up alone.”

Rose smiled quietly to herself and dipped her chin as if to hide her face, but Rey saw it all. Something twisted in Rey’s gut, a reminder that even if Rose was different from what Rey had expected, things were still complicated with her.

Rey cleared her throat, brushed past the moment.

“Would you like me to explain everything, or would you rather I went and got Finn? It might be a lot coming from someone you don’t know.”

“Oh, come on,” Rose said. “I pretty much know you. Finn talks about you a lot.”

Rey cracked a genuine smile at that. However complicated his circumstances, Finn was consistent.

“So I’m told,” she said.

And she launched into the story of everything that had happened on Crait after Rose had passed out.

…………………………………………………

After a few days of knowing her (in real life, not only in Finn’s stories), Rey was just as unsure about Rose as she had been before. And she still couldn’t figure out why. Rose was nice, and it wasn’t like Rey had anything against her.

Maybe she was just being protective of Finn, she decided. He was the most important person in her life, and she didn’t want him to get hurt. Yes. That must have been it.

The thing was, Rose seemed like the last person in the galaxy who would hurt Finn. Or one of the last. The real last person who would ever hurt Finn was someone else, and that someone was having an even harder time getting used to Rose than Rey was, although at least he knew the reason for it.

Poe eyed Rey across the table one day as they ate. Finn and Rose sat between them. Finn told a joke, Rose laughed, and Poe stood abruptly. Finn’s smile dropped immediately, and he stared down at his plate.

“I need to talk to you about the supply run,” Poe said, still looking at Rey.

“Um,” she said. “Ok?”

She followed Poe to the engineering bay, which now doubled as a strategy room.

“Has the plan changed?” Rey asked.

“What?” Poe said. “Oh. No.”

“Then why are we…?” She gestured around the room, which was a jumble of wires and levers and, as of recently, tables and models and star maps and everything else Leia needed to envision their next steps.

“Seemed like something was bothering you,” Poe said. “Thought you might want to talk about it.”

He was right. Something was bothering her. The strange vision or—she didn’t know what to call it—she had experienced when she ventured into the Force to wake Rose had not left Rey’s mind. She dreamed of the strange energy, being, whatever it was, every night. She found herself disappointed that the one in her dreams was a watered down version, and that confused her even more. The thing had terrified her. She didn’t _want_ to see the real one again.

Except that the more time passed, the more she missed it.

No matter how hard she tried to search her feelings, she still had no clue what any of it meant. She missed Master Skywalker, too, then. Missed all the things he could have taught her, all the things they could have learned together if…

But that couldn’t be what Poe was talking about. Rey thought she had hidden her distress well. She certainly wasn’t going to talk about it now, or ever, until she figured out what was going on. She didn’t want to alarm anyone.

“Just tell me,” Poe said when she didn’t answer him. “Is it Rose?”

Rey breathed a tiny sigh of relief. Rose was much easier to talk about. Well. Not much easier. But easier.

“I don’t know if I would say she’s bothering me,” Rey said. “She’s very nice and everything.”

“Yeah, I know that, everybody knows that. But you’re acting weird around her. Why?”

Rey noted how Poe ran a hand through his hair every few seconds, tapped his fingers on the wall, chewed his bottom lip. She couldn’t imagine the chaos going on inside his head right now.

“I don’t know,” Rey said. “I can’t explain it.”

“Do you have a bad feeling about her?” Poe leaned in, spoke lower. “You know, like a Force feeling or something?”

Rey laughed in spite of how tense he was.

“A Force feeling? Poe, I don’t think that exists.”

“You know what I mean!” he said. “I’m just saying, I trust your intuition more than the average person’s, and if you think she’s not as great as she seems, I would believe it.”

“It’s nothing like that, don’t worry. She’s fine. She saved Finn’s life!”

“Yeah. She did.” Poe stared at the wall over Rey’s shoulder, and she thought she could guess exactly what he was seeing in his mind’s eye.

“Since you trust my intuition so much, do you want to know what I actually think?” Rey said. “I think you’re jealous of her.”

Panic flashed in Poe’s face for just a second before he covered it with fake confusion.

“Why would I be jealous of her?”

Rey was sick of tip-toeing, sick of everyone pretending they didn’t know things that were obvious. If the situation was really so fragile that they couldn’t even acknowledge it, maybe it needed to be smashed.

“Because she kissed Finn,” she said.

They stood in silence, the implication filling the air in the room like a heavy fog.

“Doesn’t have anything to do with me,” Poe said finally.

“Of course not.”

“Well, I’ve got some work to do. Uh. Gotta prep for that supply run. See you later.”

He stormed out of the engineering bay.

Later, when she lay in her bunk, Rey couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation with Poe. A Force feeling, he had said. Could that really be what twisted in her gut when she talked to Rose? Was it some kind of warning?

Did that explain the vision?

Or, and she thought this might be even worse, was she just jealous, like Poe? What did she have to be jealous of? Finn was still her best friend. Rose hadn’t changed that.

She fell asleep thinking about Rose, and again she dreamed of the vision, of the absolute light and heat that had stripped her down and absorbed her into itself. Tonight, though, she dreamed mostly of the voice. Rose’s voice.

_Rey_ , it whispered, again and again, so close that Rey could almost, _almost_ feel the lips brushing against her ear.

…………………………………………………

The theory that her strange feelings toward Rose were some kind of warning set in quickly, and she could not shake it off. Now every time she saw Rose, all Rey thought about was what she might be hiding behind her generous smile and shining eyes. Rey could see her suspicion putting a strain on the familiarity that had been growing between them. They hardly ever spoke to each other, and when they did, Rose didn’t look her in the eye. Which only made Rey wonder if Rose was guilty of something and sensed that Rey was onto her.

Most of the space in Rey’s brain, though, was occupied by Resistance business. Finally, after weeks of drifting through hyperspace, doing absolutely nothing as it seemed to Rey, there was a plan for some action. A supply run on the Outer Rim planet Lothal. It was a small action, and it would do nothing to permanently fix their problems, but it was _something_. If nothing else, it was a chance to get off the Falcon, to breathe some unfiltered air.

Lothal had been chosen because it was remote, forgotten by the First Order, but had a history of rebel sympathies dating back to the Alliance’s fight against the Empire. They would still have to be discreet, of course, because that had been many years ago, but Leia hoped that, if they were lucky, they might sniff out some allies while restocking on food and fuel.

There were so few of them left in the Resistance now that everyone, even Rose, had a role to play in the mission. (Rey loved calling it a “mission.” It made her feel official, like she was finally _in_ the Resistance instead of on the outskirts.) They would land the Falcon—possibly the most notorious ship in the galaxy—in the middle of the planet’s desert, far from any onlookers. Leia would remain on board, both to serve as mission control and to ensure her safety, with a security detail. The rest of them would split up into two undercover teams and travel in opposite directions. One team would buy food from a small farming village, while the other bought fuel in the planet’s metropolis, Capital City.

“It’s a simple plan,” Leia said in their final strategy meeting the night before they would arrive on Lothal. “I know it seems like nothing could go wrong, but we would be fools to believe that nothing will. Be prepared for anything.”

As everyone filed out of the room to eat dinner and go to bed, Leia approached Rey.

“Stay,” she said. “I need to ask you something.”

Rey’s stomach fluttered. She was comfortable with Leia now, especially after living in such close proximity with her for two weeks, but still, the woman exuded such power. Everything about her demanded the utmost respect.

“Of course,” Rey said. “Anything.”

Leia smiled.

“I like your spirit, but you shouldn’t say ‘anything’ until you’ve heard the question.”

Rey waited as Leia watched her, assessed her.

“I’ll just come out and say it,” Leia said. “I want you to lead one of the teams tomorrow.”

Rey choked on air. She wanted to be part of the Resistance, but wasn’t this a bit fast? Sure, she had envisioned herself leading a squadron of X-wings like Poe or Master Skywalker, but those dreams had always been years down the line. She couldn’t believe Leia was giving her this chance now.

“Me?” Rey said after a moment of stunned silence. “But Poe and Lieutenant Connix—”

“Poe is still leading his team, don’t worry. I couldn’t convince him to stay out of the field if I wanted to. But I’ve talked to Lieutenant Connix, and we both think the best place for her is here on the Falcon as part of the security detail.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Rey said.

“I’m hoping you’ll say yes.”

Rey thought about it, the idea of taking other people’s lives in her hands. It wasn’t supposed to be a dangerous mission, but like Leia said, it would be foolish to assume they were totally safe. The thought was intimidating…and exhilarating. And the more she thought about it, the more Rey could see why she was the best person for the job. She had lots of experience in high-pressure situations where something went wrong and she had to think her way out. She had already faced the absolute worst of the First Order. And she had the Force, which could help them keep their cover as well as defend them, if it came to that.

She took a deep breath.

“Ok,” Rey said. “I’ll do it.”

Leia nodded, and Rey could see the satisfaction shining in her eyes.

“I’m glad.”

So, Rey would be leading her own team on a covert Resistance mission. She was definitely not on the outskirts anymore.

Leia explained that Rey’s team would be responsible for collecting food supplies in the farming village. The Capital City team’s mission would be a bit more complicated, with a much greater chance of being recognized, so Poe would lead them. He was great at complicated, as Leia put it. That team would also need more people, so Rey’s consisted only of herself and two others—one of which was Rose. When Leia told her this, Rey’s stomach dropped. The only person in the whole Resistance she would’ve preferred to avoid, and now they would be working together.  

It was probably for the best. Rey couldn’t imagine Poe in close contact with Rose for more than a few minutes. In fact, Rey thought, Poe himself had probably arranged it so that Finn would be with him and Rose would not.

Rey would just have to find a way to sideline her feelings about Rose and focus on their purpose. They needed food to keep the Resistance alive, and she was in charge of getting it. That had to be the most important thing.

Rey buzzed with anticipation, good and bad, all through dinner. When she told Finn her news, he sprayed a mouthful of Bantha milk all over the table.

“Rey!” he said, his whole face lighting up. “You’ll be so great!”

Poe, sitting beside him, just smiled.

“I’m the one who suggested you, you know,” he said. 

Rose sat with them, too, but she was quiet. She stared down at her meal tray and said nothing until the subject changed. Rey wondered if they both had similar concerns.

Right after dinner, everyone retired to their bunks. They all had a big day ahead of them when they woke, and they needed as much rest as they could get. Rey knew she should go to bed, too, but she was too anxious. Her whole body felt wired and hot. She knew she wouldn’t be able to lie still, not even for a moment.

Instead, she lingered in the main hold until everyone was gone. When she was alone, she reached into a storage compartment and pulled out the old training droid that Leia told her Master Skywalker himself had used when he was first learning to wield a lightsaber. Rey didn’t have a lightsaber anymore, but she still had her staff.

She switched on the training droid, and it slowly hummed to life. Years of disuse had clearly degraded it, but still, it eventually rose from her hand to levitate a few feet in front of her. It hung in the air and did nothing. Rey was beginning to think it wouldn’t work after all, when a bolt of energy shot out and sent a shock through her shoulder.

“Ow!” she declared at the small droid, but it was unfazed. It sent another bolt flying at her. This time, she dodged it. She grabbed her staff from where it leaned against the wall.

For hours, she sparred with the droid, blocking and dodging its bolts. The whole time, she imagined a young Master Skywalker doing the exact same thing, in the exact same place, so many years before her.

…………………………………………………

_Rey,_ the voice in her dream said. _Rey!_

_Wake up!_

With effort, she pulled her heavy eyes open to find Finn standing over her, shaking her shoulder. She was slumped over on the curved booth in the main hold. Apparently she hadn’t made it to bed after her training session.

“We’re about to enter Lothal’s atmosphere,” Finn said. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to sleep through the mission, since you’re in charge of half of it.”

“Mission,” Rey said, nodding. “Right.” She yawned.

“You ready?” Poe asked as he came around the corner with two knapsacks slung over his shoulder.

Rey sat up straighter.

“Of course,” she said. “What are those for?”

“Well, this one,” he said, handing a knapsack to her, “is for you. Just some supplies. A few rations, a canteen. Couple of blasters. You know, the necessities.”

“You think blasters will be necessary?”

Poe shrugged.

“In my experience…yes.”

Poe clapped Finn on the back.

“How ‘bout you, buddy? You ready to go?”

Finn went a second too long without answering, a second too long staring at Poe’s hand on his shoulder. Rey rolled her eyes.

“Yep,” Finn said finally. “Always ready to go. That’s me.”

Poe laughed, shaking his head. He bit his lip, as if that was a normal thing that people just did.

“So, where’s my team?” Rey said, reminding them both that she not only existed but was currently in the room. “I want to talk to them before we head out.”

Which meant talking to Rose. Rey would have to get used to it. Rose wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“Oh yeah, I meant to tell you,” Poe said. “It’s going to be less of a team and more of a duo. Pamich caught something, and she’s been hurling for hours.”

“So, it’s just going to be me and—”

“There you are!” Rose said, turning the corner into the main hold. “I was hoping we could talk strategy, now that we’re one man down. I mean—if you think we should talk strategy. You’re the one in charge.”

Something tightened in Rey’s chest. What was it about Rose that made her feel this way? What even was _this way?_

“That’s fine,” Rey said.

Rose settled into the booth beside her as Finn and Poe bustled off to some other part of the ship to get ready for their own roles in the operation.

“So,” Rose said. “Our village is fifteen miles south of the landing site. That’s fifteen miles of desert, in the middle of the day, so we’re going to need—”

“I’m familiar with desert,” Rey said.

“Right. Of course. I was just thinking, we’ll need coverage for our faces and plenty of water.”

“I’ve got both of those under control.”

“Oh. Ok. Good. That covers our travel. Once we get there, we’re looking for—”

“Yes, I was at all the same briefings as you,” Rey said. “On second thought, I don’t think we have anything to talk about. We’re ready. I’m going to go see if anyone needs help.”

Rose started to say something, but Rey scooted off the other end of the booth and left the hold. She knew she was being rude and this was no way to start the mission, but she couldn’t sit there any longer. She was running on almost no sleep, and her brain didn’t work properly around Rose anyway. It was all too much.

She went straight to the refresher and locked the door behind her. This was the only place on board the Falcon where there was any real privacy. Rey ran cold water in the sink and splashed her face several times.

She felt dizzy and overheated and wrong. _Everything_ about this felt wrong. She was leading her first Resistance mission, on special request from General Leia Organa herself. She should be ecstatic. But instead, she was panicking because she didn’t want to spend time alone with Rose, who had never even done anything wrong to her.

All because some stupid vision and a random feeling in her gut made her paranoid that there was more to Rose than met the eye. Thinking about it now, it seemed completely ridiculous, but Rey knew that that wouldn’t matter. As soon as she saw Rose again, she would go back to being impractical and defensive. She splashed her face again and lifted her eyes to meet the ones reflected back at her in the mirror.

“You can do this,” she said. “Don’t be stupid. People are counting on you.”

She took a deep breath and opened the door, ready—hopefully—to face the day ahead of her.

 

The Falcon landed smoothly, right where it was supposed to. Now that they were actually here, now that the time had actually come, that buzz of nervous excitement that had kept Rey awake all night returned to the pit of her stomach.

The boarding ramp lowered, and Leia addressed the field teams one last time.

“Be in and out as quick as you can, and don’t draw attention to yourself,” she said. “But at the same time, be on the lookout for signs of people who might be, shall we say, interested in our cause.”

As they took their first steps down the ramp, toward the surface of Lothal, Leia added:

“Most importantly, remember. Be prepared for anything.”

The words sent a tingle up Rey’s spine. A premonition, perhaps? A ‘Force feeling,’ as Poe called it? Or just another vague gut reaction that would be useless to her because she had no idea what it meant?

As soon as Rey stepped foot on the desert of Lothal, her excitement deflated.

Sand. It was everywhere, in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Rey had only been away from her own desert for a few weeks, but she had already grown accustomed to the feeling of not having sand lodged in every nook of her clothes and hair and skin.

“Does it remind you of Jakku?” Finn asked, standing beside her.

“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t miss it.”

“Finally, you see sense!”

Rey laughed. She only now realized that she had been so upset about having to be with Rose, she had forgotten to be upset about not being with Finn.

“Be careful out there,” she said. “Come back in one piece.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You too.”

They hugged each other, both squeezing tight.

“And hey,” Finn said quietly. “You should listen to Rose. She’s really smart.”

Rey instantly felt guilty, both because Finn felt the need to tell her that and because she didn’t want to believe him.

“All right,” she said. “Thanks.”

Finn said goodbye to Rose as well and gave her one of his everything-will-be-ok hugs before they turned away from each other and went their separate ways.

Rey looked at Rose trudging through the sand beside her. They both wore goggles and scarves wrapped around their faces, just like Rey had always worn on Jakku. She found that her uneasiness was more bearable now that Rose’s face was covered. Now that she couldn’t see those bright eyes.

“Wait,” Rey said. She noticed a loop of Rose’s scarf hanging loose around the back of her head. If the wind picked up, sand would find its way into that crevice in a second. Rey knew because she always used to make the same mistake.

“What’s wrong?” Rose said, her voice muffled.

“It’s your scarf. You have to—here, just let me fix it.”

Rey unraveled the scarf, revealing Rose’s face strip by strip. Her chin, then her lips, then her cheeks and her little button nose. Rey’s chest tightened and expanded at the same time for a reason she didn’t understand when Rose pushed her goggles to her forehead, uncovering her eyes. Rey tried to cover over the hitch in her breath, but she was sure Rose heard it. They were standing so close now, Rose’s face only a few inches away and a few inches below Rey’s own.

Rey pulled the scarf tight as she re-wrapped Rose’s head. Soon she could see nothing _but_ her eyes, and that was even worse than before. Now Rey had nothing to focus on but the intensity of their light.

Rey felt helpless and exposed all of a sudden, and she hated it. She stepped back and cleared her throat so her voice wouldn’t be shaky when she spoke.

“There. All good.”

“Thanks,” Rose said. “That’s harder than it looks.”

She pulled her goggles back down to cover her eyes, and Rey released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“Try living on a planet that’s nothing but desert and you’ll get the hang of it,” Rey said.

They kept walking. Before long, they crested a dune. Both of them looked back at the Falcon. From here on out, they wouldn’t be able to see it anymore. They would really be on their own. Rey tightened her grip on her staff. _Be prepared for anything_.

For the most part, Rey and Rose walked in silence. Really, aside from the overwhelming moment when Rey had woken her from her coma, silence had made up most of their relationship so far.

Rey’s mind kept wandering back to that moment, when she had heard Rose speak her name for the first time. Actually, _heard_ was the wrong word, because Rose hadn’t said anything. Rey had _felt_ it. And then she had opened her eyes to find Rose’s hands in hers. She thought about asking Rose if she had felt any of that energy, that light and heat, but she stopped herself. Until she knew what it meant, she didn’t want anyone else to know about the vision. Especially Rose, who she wasn’t even sure she could trust. Or at least, wasn’t sure she wanted to trust. 

Eventually, Rey could see the massive shimmer in the air of heat rising off of metal buildings. Their village.

“We’re almost there,” she said.

Rose only nodded. Rey wished she could leave it at that, but she was still the leader, and Rose was still her responsibility, however complicated her personal feelings.

“Are you ready to deal with the locals?” Rey asked. “Any concerns?”

“I’m ready,” Rose said, and her voice was sure. “We’ve got this.”

Rey couldn’t stop herself from smiling at that, and now she was glad her face was covered so Rose didn’t see. Rey took one more step toward the farming village and stopped dead in her tracks. She felt something—something cold and invisible as a winter wind—move over and through her. It tugged at her, begged her to follow it in a whole new direction, away from the Falcon and the farming village and everything she had come here to do. She whipped her head to her right, where the something was coming from.

“What’s going on?” Rose asked, herself looking all around for the source of Rey’s disturbance. “Rey! Do I need a blaster? What’s happening?”

“I don’t—” Rey squinted into the distance, but she saw nothing. Still, chilly tendrils caressed her skin, beckoned her forward. “It’s—it’s nothing.”

“So…what are we waiting for?” Rose asked.

Rey looked back at the village, far off on the horizon in front of them. They had a mission to complete. The Resistance was counting on her to bring them food. But she _knew_ this feeling. It wasn’t complicated or confusing like the ones Rose gave her or the ones in her dreams. This was the Force, and it was calling her somewhere else. She made a decision.

“You go on,” Rey said. “I think there’s something else I need to do.”

“What? But the mission—”

“Yes.” Rey used her sternest voice. “You go and finish the mission. I’ll be right back.”

She began her trek away from Rose, toward whatever this new thing was, but she heard footsteps in the sand behind her.

“This is ridiculous,” Rose said. “What are you even talking about?”

Rey had never heard her speak so bluntly.

“I’m going to look for something. There’s no reason for you to come with me, and someone has to get the food, so just go. That’s an order.”

“I’m not going to let you wander off into the desert by yourself.”

“You’re not going to let me?” Rey bristled at Rose’s presumption.

“No. I’m not,” Rose said, catching up to Rey and meeting her stride.

“I’m in charge, remember? You said so yourself.”

“Well, when the person in charge starts making bad decisions, I ignore them.”

Rey shook her head. She didn’t want to deal with this right now. She needed to focus, to concentrate on the pull of the Force and figure out where it was leading her.

“Fine! Come with me. Whatever. I don’t care.”

“What about the food?” Rose said.

Rey gritted her teeth.

“Stop. Talking. I’m trying to concentrate.”

She stopped, closed her eyes, evened her breath (as much as she could through her frustration). Her body melted away, her mind free and open to the universe.

The coldness slammed into her like a wall, and images flashed through her mind—a huge cone of rock spearing a starry sky, a door, a dark room. She felt her feet begin to move, though she did not move them, and she knew that they would lead her in the right direction. When she opened her eyes, it felt like emerging from a tub of ice, the cold immediately replaced with the desert sun beating down on her.

“It’s this way,” Rey said. “If you’re coming.”

“Was that—did you just use the Force?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. So this is a Jedi thing.”

“No,” Rey said immediately. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”

The same defensiveness she felt about her vision rose in her now. She wished Rose would just go to the farming village and do what they were supposed to do. Rey didn’t want to share this with her.

They trudged on for hours, the sun shining right in their eyes as it fell toward the horizon in front of them. The knapsack with their rations and water and maybe necessary blasters weighed down on Rey, the straps cutting into her shoulders. When she couldn’t take it any longer, she took it off her back and used the Force to float it along beside her.

“Whoa,” Rose said. “Cool.”

“This is nothing compared to those boulders on Crait.” But then Rey remembered. Rose hadn’t seen any of that. She had been unconscious. Because she had risked her own life to save Finn’s. Right.

Guilt twisted in Rey’s gut.

“I never thanked you,” Rey said, her voice softer than it had been all day. An olive branch of sorts. “Finn wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. And I don’t know what I would do without him.”

“Oh,” Rose said, clearly taken aback by the change of subject. “No need to thank me. I didn’t do it for—I mean—it was the only thing to do.”

Rey looked at her.

“Not everyone would think so. You were very brave.”

Rose watched her own feet dredging through the sand and said nothing. Rey felt emboldened. There was something she had to ask about now that the chance presented itself.

“Just out of curiosity, why did you kiss him?” she asked. As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could swallow them, clear the air of them. What did it matter anyway? Her cheeks burned.

“I don’t know, really,” Rose said. “I just wanted him to know…I don’t know.”

Rey remembered something Finn had told her.

“Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love,” Rey said.

“Yes. Exactly.”

Before Rey could ask the next question, something in the distance caught her eye. Silhouetted against the pink and purple of the sunset was something tall and pointy—it was far away still, but Rey knew that when they got close, they would find a cone of rock. The cold feeling jolted through her, sharp and urgent.

“That’s it,” Rey said. “That’s what we’re looking for.”

Seized by an urge to _be_ there right then, Rey grabbed Rose’s hand so they wouldn’t be separated and took off at a sprint. Rose’s legs were shorter, and she could hardly keep up, but Rey tugged her right along. She couldn’t slow down. Something huge was waiting for her. Waiting for both of them, perhaps.

The air grew cold now that the sun was gone, and soon the breaths that Rey gulped down stung her throat. But it was worth it. The cone grew closer with every stride. Even now, they were close enough that she could see the striations in its grey surface.

Her lungs burning and heaving, her legs sore, Rey finally reached the cone. As soon as they came to a stop, Rose ripped the goggles and scarf off her face, panting.

“Why,” Rose said between breaths. “Did we just. Do that?”

Rey barely heard her. She was too busy staring up at the huge rock, surrounded on all sides by stars, just as it had been when she had seen it in her mind. What was it? A mountain? An outpost? No—it was deeper and older than either. Rey felt a power rising from the ground beneath it, emanating from it, rocking through her. She hadn’t felt such a sensation since she had stood with Master Skywalker in the Jedi temple on Ahch-To.

Rey gasped.

“I think this is a Jedi temple,” she said.

Rose’s mouth dropped open. She looked the rock slowly up and down.

“Wow,” she whispered. The wonder on her face was as pure and sweet as a child’s.

Warmth bubbled up in Rey’s chest, and she smiled. Then she realized. They were still holding hands.

Rey pulled her hand away too harshly and immediately regretted it. She removed her goggles and unraveled her headscarf, to make it seem like she just needed the free hand, nothing more.

“How do we get in?” Rose asked.

Rey’s stomach fluttered with nerves. If this was really a Jedi temple, she had no idea what to expect. Her experience in the last temple had been…unsettling, to say the least.

“I don’t know if we should,” she said.

“Oh no. You made me run all this way. We’re going in.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Why? You think I can’t handle it?”

“No, I—” Rey didn’t know how to explain. And she shouldn’t have to, anyway. Rose was supposed to listen to her. “I need to think about this. I need to…search my feelings or something.”

“The Force wouldn’t bring you here just to leave you out on the doorstep,” Rose said.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rey snapped. “The Force isn’t all good feelings and happy endings, Rose. It’s complicated.”

“All right. Fine.” Rose sat down on a boulder and crossed her arms. Her mouth pressed into a hard line.

“Finally. Thank you.”

“You know what, actually, it’s not fine,” Rose said. She stood up again and planted herself right in front of Rey. Even though Rose was several inches shorter than her, Rey was intimidated by the glint in her eyes.

“What is your problem with me?” Rose asked.

Oh, no. Not this. Not now.

“I don’t have a problem with you,” Rey said.

“Yeah, you do, and honestly, I have no idea what happened. I thought we were going to be friends. Then you started acting weird around me—and don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You never talk to me, you never even look at me. You would avoid me altogether if it weren’t for Finn. So, tell me. What’s your problem with me?”

Rey didn’t know what to say. Obviously, Rose was right. Rey did have a problem with her. But even Rey didn’t know what it was. How was she supposed to explain something she herself didn’t understand?

“It’s because I kissed Finn, isn’t it?” Rose continued. “You don’t like me because I kissed Finn, and you’re jealous. Poe, too. Is everybody around here in love with him?”

“No!” Rey said. “I mean, I’m not. Poe, well, I don’t want to speak for Poe, and anyway, that’s not even the point! I don’t care that you kissed Finn. Well, actually, I might care, but not because I’m in love with him.”

“Ok, then what is it? Why don’t you like me?”

Rey took a deep breath. She would just tell the truth. Tell the truth, get it over with, move on.

“I don’t know. I just have this feeling about you. I’ve had it since before you even woke up. I have no idea what it is or where it comes from, but it makes me nervous. It’s like some kind of premonition. A warning.”

Rose’s brow furrowed as she searched Rey’s face.

“That’s a bad reason not to like someone,” she said finally.

“I never said it was a good reason.”

They stood there in the night air, with only the scant light of the stars illuminating the space between them. Rey couldn’t make out the expression on Rose’s face.

A breeze blew over them, and Rey shivered. She hadn’t realized until then how cold she was. Of course. She knew all about freezing desert nights. She had let the temple make her stupid and careless. It was already getting in her head, and she was still outside.

“We’ll freeze to death if we don’t build a fire,” Rey said. “Hopefully there’s some flint and tinder in this knapsack.”

“Wait—where is the knapsack?”

Rey’s stomach dropped. She looked all around her on the ground, but the knapsack—the one containing all their food and water—was nowhere. She must have dropped it when she saw the temple and started sprinting.

“No,” Rey said. She checked behind every boulder, even though she knew she wouldn’t find it. “No no no no no no.”

“What do we do now?” Rose asked.

Rey squeezed her eyes shut. There was only one option. But they couldn’t. It was too dangerous. She was nowhere near ready for something like this. She opened her eyes and looked up at the temple once again. It was the only option.

“I guess we’re going in after all,” Rey said.

…………………………………………………

They circled the temple and circled it again. The rock’s curving surface was completely smooth, without a crack or crevice, much less an entrance. The door Rey had seen for a split second when the temple first called to her had been huge and made of metal—there was nothing like that here.

“What—” Rose started to ask.

“Don’t ask me what we do now,” Rey said. “Not again. I don’t know.”

The cold bit at her skin. When the wind blew, her bones ached. They needed shelter, _now_. But there simply was not a door. Was this a test? What was she supposed to do, create her own door? She didn’t have time for Jedi riddles and metaphors.

“Rey,” Rose said, and it sent a jolt through Rey’s body. The sound of Rose’s voice around her name was something from her dreams, something she was always thinking about in the back of her mind. Actually hearing it out loud caught Rey off guard, but it also gave her an idea.

The last time she tried to use to Force to do something she wasn’t sure was possible, she had been enveloped and consumed and infected by the energy. She had also been successful. Maybe the two were related.

“There’s one thing I can try,” Rey said. “But I’m not even sure how…”

Then she remembered something else about the last time.

“Give me your hands,” she said to Rose suddenly.

“Why?”

_Good question_ , Rey thought. Now was not the time to think about the answer.

“It might help,” she said. “Just trust me.”

Rose pursed her lips and scrunched her brow, but she reached out her hands all the same. Rey took them in her own, and already she felt transported back to that moment. Rose’s hands were warm and soft and solid, just as they had been then.

“Thank you,” Rey said. “Now. Let me concentrate.”

She closed her eyes, slowed her breath until she almost fell asleep. Again she felt her mind turn to fluid, floating out into the universe. The first thing she felt was the temple itself. Its hum was so loud, its vibrations so powerful, that it overshadowed the familiar frequencies of the stars and the wind and nearly everything else.

Nearly.

Right in front of Rey, even closer than the temple, the same overwhelming light and heat tugged at her. She had grown used to the pale reproduction in her dreams and forgotten how painful the real thing was. It seared her skin, blinded her. She resisted its urging to come inside and lose herself again, but there was no point. She knew, and it knew, too, with absolute certainty, that she would give in before long. That deep down, she _wanted_ to give in. So she did. She sacrificed herself to its tide and let it pull her all the way in. As she felt herself beginning to disintegrate, she anticipated the voice. Any moment now, it would crawl up beside her and whisper in her ear.

It did come, but its message was new.

_Trust me,_ the energy said with Rose’s voice. _Just trust me._

The light burned so brightly that Rey cried out in pain. Had it been so terrible before? How could she ever have forgotten this?

Just when she thought her very soul would explode with the sheer pressure of the energy surging around her, she opened her eyes to find herself lying on her back in cold sand. She gasped for breath. The world around her was so dark, she could see nothing. Or maybe the light had actually blinded her.

She felt something, though, in her clenched hands. Something soft and warm and solid. Rose. Their hands were still wrapped tightly together. Rey used that feeling to pull herself up from the depths. She began to remember where she was, what she was doing. By the silvery light of the stars and Lothal’s rising moon, she saw Rose kneeling in the sand beside her and the huge bulk of the temple rising above her.

“Are you all right?” Rose asked breathlessly, her eyes wide. She untwined their hands, and Rey’s went immediately limp and cold. Then she felt Rose’s hands on her face, checking the temperature of her forehead and wiping sand from her cheeks. Something boiled in Rey’s stomach, threatened to erupt and burst from her mouth if she wasn’t careful.

“I’m fine,” Rey said. She sat up slowly, and Rose’s hands fell away.

“That was terrifying.”

Rey’s breath caught in her throat. “You saw it, too?”

“I saw you,” Rose said. “You collapsed and started convulsing. You were holding my hands so tight that I couldn’t even help you. I thought—I thought you were dying.”

Rey opened her mouth to say something, to reassure Rose and wipe the fear from her eyes, but something caught her eye.

A huge, metal doorway set into the side of the temple, spread open like the maw of a beast. Where there had been nothing before.

A smile spread slowly across her face. She looked Rose right in her shining brown eyes.

“It worked,” Rey whispered. Rose’s head whipped around to look at the temple, and a smile burst on her face, too.

“Rey! You did it! I don’t believe it!”

Before Rey knew what was happening, Rose wrapped her in a hug. After a moment of hesitation, Rey laid aside all the baggage between them, all the complicated feelings that made no sense, and just let this moment be simple. Rose was so warm and so close, and she smelled like grease, which should have been a bad thing but was wonderful somehow. Rey wound her arms around Rose’s back.

“ _We_ did it,” Rey said. She breathed into Rose’s shoulder once, and then it was over. Their one simple moment was gone.

Rose hopped up and walked toward the door they had created together. Rey watched her and thought about the voice in her vision.

_Just trust me._

Rey thought she was beginning to do just that.

…………………………………………………

“I’ve got a good feeling about this,” Rose said, standing before the giant pitch-black hole in the wall of the temple. She was smiling, her eyes sparkling as they roved over the so-called door.

“I don’t,” Rey said. With the powerful Force energy flowing from within the temple thrumming through her, her staff felt weak and limp in her hands. It wouldn’t be enough to fight off whatever they met in here. Or maybe even worse, whoever. Either way, she sensed that _something_ awaited them in the depths of the temple, and she would feel much better about meeting it if she had a lightsaber.

She still didn’t think going inside was a good idea, especially for Rose. Rey had seen the kind of tricks a place like this could play on the mind, but Rose had no idea what they were in for or how to defend herself against it.

A wind blew past so forcefully that is almost knocked Rey over. Sand and cold alike pricked at her skin. Things were getting less hospitable out here by the minute. Rey would just have to defend the both of them.

“Let’s go,” Rey said, leading the way into the cavernous space beyond the door. “And don’t touch anything.”

“Obviously. I’m not a child,” Rose said.

Rey hadn’t meant it like that, but now that she thought about it, maybe she had been thinking about Rose as if she were a child.

“I’m sorry,” Rey said. “You’re—”

As soon as Rose crossed the threshold into the temple, the whole wall shifted with a deafening, gravelly groan, stopping Rey midsentence. The door sealed shut behind them, leaving them in total darkness.

“Rose? Are you all right?” Rey called, flailing her hands in the darkness, searching for Rose or the wall or anything else to orient herself. Again she wished for the lightsaber. Losing it was like losing a limb, even though she had only used it for a short time.

“I’m fine,” Rose said just as Rey’s hand collided with her shoulder. Instinctually, Rey gripped her. “You?”

Rey was taken aback and could do nothing but blink into the darkness for a few seconds. No one but Finn ever thought to check in on her. It was not an easy thing to get used to, someone else having her back.

“Yeah. Fine,” she said finally.

“I know you told me not to ask this anymore, but what do we do now? This is your area of expertise.”

Rey actually felt more like a stumbling child than a Jedi expert. She could have searched her feelings again for the answer, she supposed, but she was just so tired. She didn’t have the energy for another encounter with that bright energy, and something told her that she would meet it again if she let herself drift off into the Force right now.

Thinking of the energy reminded her what it had said earlier that night.

_Just trust me._

Rey realized that maybe she didn’t have to come up with all the answers on her own. Rose wasn’t a child, after all. And she had done so much for the Resistance, on Crait and Canto Bight and long before that. If both Finn and the Force wanted Rey to listen to Rose, maybe she should give it a try.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Rey said. “What do you think we should do?”

“Oh,” Rose said, sounding surprised. “Um. Well. Unless I’m just completely losing my mind, I think I can hear wind moving through the rock somewhere. Maybe that means when the sun comes up, some light will stream through a crack or something and we’ll be able to see.”

Rey listened carefully, and she heard it, too—a soft howling, whistling sound echoing down from high over their heads.

“You’re not losing your mind,” Rey said. “But how does that help us? The sun won’t be up for hours.”

“It doesn’t help us right now, sure, but here’s what I’m thinking. I’m exhausted. And I know you must be, too. Why don’t we find the wall, so we have some idea of where we are, and go to sleep? By the time we wake up, it’ll be daytime, and we can figure out where to go from there.”

Of course Rey was exhausted. Every second they stood here, she had to consciously hold her eyelids up. But sleeping in the dark in an ancient Jedi temple they knew nothing about? The risks were even greater than she knew to guess.

“We can’t sleep here,” Rey said.

“I understand why you say that, but we can sleep in shifts. Look out for each other. We’ll be fine.”

Rey thought about it, and the more she imagined lying down on the cool ground and letting her body rest, the more Rose’s plan made sense. They wouldn’t be able to do anything in the dark, anyway. They would have to wait for the sun to come up no matter what, so they might as well make the most of the time.

“All right,” Rey said. “But I’m taking first watch.” She was still the leader of this mission, no matter how far afield it had gone. And she had to keep Rose safe.

“Whatever you say.”

Rey’s hand still gripped Rose’s shoulder. Rose reached up and grabbed it in her own hand.

“So we don’t lose each other,” Rose said, and Rey thought she noticed a strange edge to her voice.

For the third time that day, Rey held Rose’s hand. She was beginning to get used to the warm pressure of their palms squeezed together. It steadied her. Every other time someone had taken her hand, even when it was Finn, she felt uncomfortable, too vulnerable, wrong. With Rose, it was so different, though Rey couldn’t explain why. She added it to the list of confusing things about Rose. 

They moved slowly in the dark, until their outstretched hands met the cold stone of the wall.

“You sure you’re good to take first watch?” Rose asked.

“Of course,” Rey said.

“If you say so.”

Rey sat down with her back against the wall, and Rose curled up beside her. Hesitantly, Rey rested her hand on Rose’s leg. For safety purposes, of course. Rey could see nothing in the dark, after all. She wouldn’t know that Rose was safe unless she was touching her. The warm, tingly feeling that shot through her veins like electricity had nothing to do with it.

She waited to see if Rose would brush her hand away or tell her to stop, but Rose did nothing of the sort. She just breathed into the darkness until Rey was sure she slept.

After a while of listening to the wind howling through the cracks and Rose’s deep, even breaths, Rey’s body finally relaxed. She had been carrying all the stress of the day in her shoulders, but now they drooped. Her chest opened up, let her breathe easy for the first time in hours. Before Rey noticed what was happening, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, she thought perhaps she was still dreaming. The sound that woke her was one her sleeping mind had been obsessing over lately.

“Rey?” Rose said. When her eyelids fluttered open, Rey could see nothing but Rose’s face. They were so close she forgot how to breathe for a moment. Rey was lying down now, her body squished between Rose and the wall. As she came to her senses, she found that her arm had shifted so that it draped over Rose’s waist.

But no. That wasn’t the important thing. The important thing was that Rey had fallen asleep when she was supposed to be on watch. She had left them both completely vulnerable to the temple and its wiles. She bolted upright, her cheeks burning.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what happened, I should have been more careful, I should have—”

“Hey. Are you hurt?” Rose said, sitting up beside her.

Rey looked at her and found that her face was calm. She was almost smiling.

“No?” Rey said.

“Good. Me neither. So everything’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“But we could’ve—”

Rose planted a hand on Rey’s shoulder.

“But we didn’t.”

Rey nodded.

“Right. Ok.”

They watched each other’s faces, and Rey felt her breath hitch. Rose did not move her hand. Rey could not look away from the bright, warm depths of Rose’s eyes—was it her imagination, or were they moving closer? And then she realized a second important thing, maybe even more important than the first. _She could see._

“The sun!” she said suddenly, and the moment ended. Rey regretted it immediately, though why she should regret it, she did not know. They were just looking at each other.

Rose’s face lit up.

“I was right!”

They both hopped to their feet to get a good look at their surroundings. The room they stood in now was a circle, and the ceiling towered high above their heads. Great metal pillars lined the perimeter. The wall, too, was made of metal, though in the night, Rey had been sure it was stone. It was all old, dull, and weathered as the rock itself. There was no telling how long the temple had been sitting here idle, waiting for someone like Rey to hear its call and come running.

“No way out,” Rose said. She was right, Rey realized. There were no doors.

“There was no way in, either, remember?” Rey said, smirking at her.

Rose smiled back.

The hot, electric feeling pumped through Rey again. She had no idea what it meant, but she liked it. Could it be the Force, too?

The Force. She needed to focus. The Force had called her here, and now she was inside, right where it wanted her. But why? It was definitely a Jedi temple. Any doubts she had had were cleared when she saw the markings on the wall, similar to ones she had seen on Ahch-To. Even so, that didn’t tell her what she was supposed to _do_.

She would have to search her feelings again, but that might prove difficult with Rose standing so near. Rey had made the connection at some point in the night when she hovered between sleeping and waking—whatever the powerful energy from her visions was, and whatever her strange feelings towards Rose were, they went together, hand-in-hand. She only ever encountered the energy when she was with Rose. What that correlation could mean was a mystery to sort out later. For now, it was enough to know that if she wanted to hear what the Force was telling her about the temple, she would have to find some way to block out Rose.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Rey said, “but I need you to get away from me.”

Rose’s face fell.

“What?”

“No, not like that, it’s not—” Rey searched for a way to explain herself without actually having to explain herself. “I just need to focus. I need to figure out why we’re here.”

“Oh. I thought maybe it was because—but never mind.” Red bloomed on Rose’s cheeks. Rey wanted to ask what she had been about to say, but then Rose turned on her heel and strode to the other side of the cavernous room. That was probably for the best. Rey really did need to focus.

She sat on the ground, cross-legged, with her palms resting on the cool stone of the floor. She closed her eyes and shut out everything—every feeling, every sensation, every thought—that wasn’t the temple beneath her. Before long, she felt its power vibrating through her, as if she were an extension of the rock. A voice that was both familiar and strange, young and ancient, warm and bitter cold, filled the air around her.

_The time has come to complete your training,_ it said.

_How?_ Rey thought.

_Like all the others before you,_ said the voice.

When Rey opened her eyes again, the path ahead was clear in her mind, placed there by the temple itself.

“I know what to do now. Follow me,” she called to Rose, who stood on the other side of the room, facing the wall.

“So what are we here for?” Rose asked as she walked back to Rey.

“They didn’t tell me that much. But they did tell me where to find a door.”

Rey approached one of the metal columns and found a small marking in the shape of a spiral. She punched it, and a split appeared in the wall ahead of her. The split grinded open more and more until it formed a door just wide enough for one person to enter and only a few feet taller than Rey.

“Wow,” Rose said again, staring in awe at the dimly lit hallway that stretched out behind the door. The way she said it, it was as if she couldn’t help herself. It was genuine wonder, the same as when Rey lifted the knapsack with the Force and when they first found the temple. Rey thought that she could watch Rose’s face light up like that forever and never get tired of it.

Rose caught her staring, and Rey’s cheeks burned.

“So, um,” Rey mumbled, “they said if we go down there, we’ll find another door, and behind that one is the thing we’re supposed to find.”

“Wait a second—who’s ‘they’?”

“I don’t know. Just a voice in my head. It told me I have to finish my training, whatever that means.”

“You mean I’m about to see some secret Jedi stuff?” Rose asked, her face shining even brighter somehow. Rey laughed.

“I guess so.”

She took a deep breath and took a few steps into the hallway. She turned to say something to Rose, but before she could even take a breath, the door slammed shut, much faster than it had opened. And Rey was alone. Which meant Rose was alone.

Rey pounded the wall with her fists, as if that would make a difference.

“Rose? Rose, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

Only silence answered her, which meant that either no, Rose could not hear her, or no, Rose was not all right. She had no way of knowing which it was.

Rey pried at the wall where she thought the crack had formed, but it did not budge. She beat the wall some more, kicked it, whacked it with her staff, but nothing happened. If the temple wanted her to be alone for this part of the journey, she was going to be alone. Maybe, if she cooperated, the temple would keep Rose safe and reunite them once her training was complete. So she kept walking down the hallway.

The passage was lit from beneath by lights set into the ground, but it was still so dark that she could see her own footsteps on the dirt floor and little more than that. She walked and walked and walked and walked until she couldn’t keep track of the time anymore. How long had she been separated from Rose? Minutes? Hours? The longer Rey was alone in the dark, the greater her fear that something terrible was happening to Rose at that very moment. Just imagining it made her blood boil. She wanted to punch the wall some more, punish the temple for putting them through this. At the very moment she felt hot, angry tears swell in her eyes, the voice reverberated through her again.

_Rey_ , it said. _If you want to find what the temple has to offer, you must let go of your feelings. Fear is the path to the dark side._

“How am I supposed to let go when you made me leave Rose all on her own?” Rey shouted into the darkness. There was no reply.

Rey broke into a sprint. She couldn’t stand this anymore. She had known that the temple would do something like this, mess with her mind like it was some kind of game. She hardly cared about the mysteries of the temple anymore. She just wanted to find Rose and get out of here. Go back to the Falcon, where everything could be normal again.

Normal. The thought stopped Rey in her tracks. Normal on the Falcon meant being so wary of Rose that Rey didn’t even want to look at her. It meant avoiding her in the halls and second-guessing everything she said. That was easier, really, than talking to her and touching her and obsessing over whether she was all right at any given moment. It was easier…but Rey didn’t think she wanted to make that trade. They had been on Lothal for—what, a day? But somehow, everything had changed. Rey couldn’t pinpoint when it had happened, but now that she thought about it, she was sure. She liked Rose. A lot. Force feelings and premonitions be damned.

As soon as Rey realized it, a shiver ran down her spine. A warm, tingly, electric shiver. She smiled to herself in the dark.

Relief washed through her now that that was settled. But it did nothing to change her current predicament. She was still trapped in the passage. She still couldn’t find the second door that would lead her to the thing that would help her complete her training.

_Let go,_ the voice said again in a faint whisper.

“Right. Let go.” Rey took a deep breath. “Rose is fine. She can take care of herself. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

When her mind was clear, a second light source appeared, hovering above her. It glowed white and harsh like a star. Slowly, it descended until it floated just at her eye level. Then it grew and morphed until it formed the outline of a doorway. On the other side, Rey could see only more darkness.

“This is what I’m supposed to do?” she said. The voice didn’t answer, but Rey felt an affirmation deep down that came from somewhere outside herself. She took a step through the door. On the other side, she tripped on a rock that hadn’t been there a second before and fell flat on her face in the dirt.

She raised her head and looked around. She was in an entirely new room now, much smaller and less grandiose than the chamber she and Rose had first encountered. This room really did have stone walls. Rocks and boulders littered the floor. It seemed less like a room, in fact, than a cave. Everything here was natural. Even the light looked and felt like it came from the sun, though the room was too deep in the temple for that to be true.

In the center of the room, a stone pillar grew directly out of the ground. As soon as she laid eyes on it, Rey knew. This. This was the source of that cold chill, that magnetic pull that had drawn her here in the first place. She rose from the ground and dusted off.

She gripped her staff in both hands as she approached the pillar. It enticed her, but its call carried with it a foreboding undercurrent.

The pillar rose only to her waist, but it was twice as wide around as she was. As she came closer, she realized that it held something. In the very center, a small cluster of crystals grew from the rock. They glowed with an iridescent light, ethereal against the backdrop of the simple room. Rey’s eyes locked onto the crystals, and she could not look away. They held her there, practically hypnotized.

“Kyber crystals,” said a voice from behind her. It was the same voice that had helped her through the temple, she could sense it, but this time, it sounded different. This was a voice she knew. When she turned, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Master Skywalker,” she breathed, and forgetting all about the crystals, she ran to him, ready to embrace him, tears already slipping down her cheeks. But her arms fell right through him, as if through a cold mist. The image of his form wavered.

“In a way, yes,” he said, smirking.

“I don’t understand,” Rey said. “You’re gone. I felt it. So did Leia.”

“I no longer live in your plane of existence, but my spirit lives on in the Force. Just like everyone and everything else. As I told Leia, no one is ever really gone.”

“But what…” A thousand questions raced to the front of Rey’s mind. “What are you doing here? How did you know I would be here?”

“I already told you what I’m doing here,” Luke said. “It’s time to complete your training.”

Rey’s head swam.

“I don’t understand.”

“No one will ever truly understand the Force, Rey. That’s what I learned in my lifetime. But here we are, all the same.” He nodded toward the stone pillar. “Kyber crystals.”

Rey gazed again at their otherworldly glow. A glow that seemed familiar.

“They almost look like—”

“Lightsabers?” Luke interrupted. “Where exactly did you think lightsabers came from?”

“That means—am I—I’m going to make my own lightsaber? That’s why I’m here?”

Luke only grinned.

Despite her lingering confusion, her shock at seeing Master Skywalker again, her anxiety over still being separated from Rose—a smile lit Rey’s face. Her own lightsaber. One that she built with her own hands. It was like a dream.

“How do I—”

“Stop asking questions,” Luke said. “Just do it. Let the Force guide you.”

Rey reached out and let her hand hover over the cluster of crystals. One of them, rough and dirty and smaller than several of the others, pulled her toward it. She gripped the crystal in her hand and tugged at it, expecting resistance, but there was none. It slipped smoothly from its setting in the rock. The raw power of it beat against her palm. She felt it in her blood, in her bones. Its pulse matched the beating of her heart.

“I don’t have any parts,” she said, looking to Master Skywalker again.

“That staff in your hand should do just fine,” he said.

_Of course_. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? This staff had been a part of her for years. She wielded it as easily as her own fists.

Rey sat down cross-legged in the dirt and got to work. The composition of her staff was very different from that of a lightsaber, but as she began to assemble her weapon, she found that she had every part she needed. The Force nudged her intuition, showed her which pieces went where. Only once, sparks jumped out and singed her hands when she made a misstep.

After at least hours of meticulous fiddling and shaping, the handle was complete. One long rod, with an opening for a blade on each end. All that remained was to place the crystal in its casing.

It snapped perfectly into place, and then Rey felt that familiar thrum of a lightsaber in her hand. She stood, facing Master Skywalker, who had watched over her in silence the whole time.

“What do you think?” she said.

“I don’t know yet,” said Master Skywalker. “Let’s see how it works.”

Rey activated the saber and a blade of pure energy, as bright and yellow as the Jakku sun, shot from each end of the handle. Instantly, she felt as though her arm had doubled in size. If she had thought her staff was a part of her, she had been wrong. _This_ was a part of her, in a way that Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber had never been. She swung and twirled it in front of her, testing it out.

Luke smiled.

“Not bad,” he said.

Rey deactivated the blades.

“So,” she said. “What now?”

“Long term?” he shrugged. “Even I don’t know that. I suppose it is up to you. But for right now, I believe you have some friends who are looking for you.”

Friends. Including Rose. Which reminded Rey of another question.

“Master,” she said. “Before you go, there’s something I need to ask you about. The Force…can it warn you about people? Give you premonitions about people who can’t be trusted?”

Luke narrowed his eyes.

“Sometimes the Force can enhance your natural intuition, yes,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just…” Finally, the time had come to explain herself. Finally, she could talk about her feelings toward Rose, her visions, the energy, all of it. But she found that, if the result would be Master Skywalker telling her she had been right all along, that it really had been a warning about Rose, she didn’t want to know. “I’ve been having strange visions. Feelings I can’t explain. There’s this light and heat and…I don’t know what else, but it’s all surrounding this person—this woman—someone in the Resistance. Her name is Rose.”

Master Skywalker laughed out loud.

“Are you serious?” he said. “Rey. You haven’t figured that out yet?”

Rey’s cheeks burned.

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “It’s confusing. And terrifying sometimes. Is that what it is? Fear?”

Luke shook his head.

“You’re completely missing the point,” he said. “What you are feeling, what the Force is trying to show you, isn’t fear. It’s the opposite of fear.”

Rey thought hard for a moment. The opposite of fear. Was that supposed to mean something to her? Eventually, she just shrugged at him.

“Love!” he said, gesturing wildly. “It’s love!”

Rey’s heart stopped. Her eyes went wide. It couldn’t be. Rey loved her friends, and she loved flying, and she loved the smell of trees. None of it felt the way she felt about Rose. None of it was so gut-wrenching, so frustrating, so overwhelming. This had to be something else.

“You’re wrong,” Rey said. “Love can’t be this complicated.”

“It isn’t.” Luke smiled at her one last time. “It’s the simplest thing in the world.”

With that, he faded into the light. Rey could mourn his absence for only a moment. Her brain was so overloaded with what he had said.

It was impossible, ridiculous—it didn’t make any sense. Rey wasn’t in love with Rose. Rey had never been in love with anyone. Besides, these feelings began before she even spoke to Rose at all.

Maybe it had been a Force feeling, though. A warning. A premonition. Not of something terrible to come, but of something else entirely…

Finally, it all clicked. Rey understood now. She understood many things.

Bursting with a new sense of purpose that had nothing to do with the temple or the mission, Rey took off running out the door through which she had come.

…………………………………………………

She was too excited, too chaotic. Again, she stumbled as she crossed through the mystical door that was not always a door and landed on her face.

“There you are!” a voice said from somewhere to her left. Then, more urgently: “Are you all right? What happened?”

_Rose._

Rey lifted herself off the ground and found that she was back in the massive room with the pillars and the markings. The room where she and Rose had spent the night together. Rey’s eyes searched madly until they found what they were looking for.

When she saw Rose, rushing toward her from the other end of the cavern, Rey saw her clearly for the very first time. There were no more tangled feelings clogging up her chest, getting in the way. There were feelings—a lot of them, and strong—and maybe they were even the same ones as before, but now that Rey knew what they meant, everything was different. No longer did she dread the sight of Rose’s shining eyes.

In that moment, Rey forgot about her new lightsaber. She forgot about the ghost of Master Skywalker. She forgot about Finn and Poe and General Leia and the whole of the Resistance. In that moment, there was only Rose, lit by the soft sunlight showering down on them, her brow furrowed, her black hair a bushy mess escaping from its ponytail, and her eyes, shining somehow brighter than ever in the dim room.

Something molten hot lodged in Rey’s gut, rose through her body like a wave, carried her to Rose. With no control over what she was doing, Rey closed the distance between them. Every inch of it.

Rey crashed into Rose, grabbed her face in both hands, and pulled her so close. Their lips met, pushing and pulling against each other. Rey had never done anything like this before, and she had no idea how it was supposed to go, but she knew she must be doing something right when she felt Rose’s hands weaving through her hair. The thing in Rey’s gut exploded, flung its raging fire out to consume the whole world.

Then Rose pulled away. It was over. The second their lips parted, the realization of what Rey had just done came crashing down on her head. Her face burned bright red.

“I don’t understand,” Rose said.

“I’m sorry—I don’t know what—I didn’t mean—” Rey scrambled for something to say that would erase it, while at the same time she wanted nothing more in the universe than to do it again.

“No,” Rose said softly. She rested her hand on Rey’s cheek. “Don’t be sorry. I just mean, I thought you hated me. You said yourself you had a bad feeling about me.”

“Well,” Rey said. “Turns out I was wrong.”

Rose smiled. And Rey smiled. And they kissed again, softer this time. Rose’s thumb stroked Rey’s cheek.

“But wait,” Rey said. “What about Finn?”

Rose shook her head.

“He’s my friend. My really great friend.”

“Yeah. Ok. Mine, too.”

They both burst out laughing. Here they were, standing in the middle of an ancient Jedi temple, holding each other and talking about Finn. Everything about this was ridiculous. And perfect.

“Rose. I think I might be in love with you,” Rey said.

“Oh.” That look of pure wonder fell over Rose’s face again.

“I mean, I’ve never been in love before, so I could be wrong. I don’t really know what it feels like—”

Rose kissed her before she could finish her thought.

“I’m pretty sure this is it,” Rose said.

They stood there, inches apart, just looking at each other. Rey could drink in Rose’s face for hours and never be satisfied. If they never moved past this moment, she thought, she would be happy.

But then the ground, the walls, the ceiling, everything around them began to vibrate. Rey feared the temple was caving in on itself and burying them inside, but then she realized. The walls were rotating slowly upward, out of the ground, to reveal the same metal door through which they had entered. Bright desert sunlight poured into the room, blinding her. Funny, she didn’t remember the ground shaking or the temple moving the last time the door had opened. This was as strange and spontaneous a place as she could have imagined.

“Hey, we did it again!” Rose said. “We’re getting good at that.”

She grabbed Rey’s hand—Rey’s heart skipped a beat at that familiar warm pressure—and led her out into the light.

They stood side by side, hand in hand, looking out over the sea of dunes.

“Well that mission got a bit off-track, didn’t it?” Rey said.

“Actually, I think we wound up exactly where we were meant to be.”

Rose smiled up at Rey, both of them squinting against the sun, and Rey thought:

_Exactly where I was meant to be._

…………………………………………………

Where they were actually meant to be, though, was back on the Falcon. Their mission was supposed to take a day and a half, tops. Rey had no idea how long they had been in the temple, but it was at least that. For the first time, Rey thought about everyone else. Had Finn and Poe completed their part of the mission? Were they worried about her and Rose?

Now that Rey’s task at the temple was complete, she couldn’t decide if they should go to the farming village and finish the job or check back in at the Falcon first. Leia had entrusted Rey with such a simple yet vital task, and she had mucked it up beyond belief.

“It’s not over yet,” Rose said when Rey voiced her disappointment in herself. “We can still complete the mission. Leia said to be prepared for anything, remember? She’s not expecting us to come back exactly when and how as planned. She is expecting us to come back with the food, though.”

“Right,” Rey said. Now she wished she had listened to Rose all along. She almost couldn’t even remember what had stood in the way. She squeezed Rose’s hand. “Let’s do it, then.”

“Yeah!” Rose stood on her tip-toes to give Rey a peck on the cheek. Warmth spread from the spot where her lips touched Rey’s skin all the way down to the pit of Rey’s belly. It felt all at once like the first time they had ever touched and something they had done a thousand times. New and exciting but already so familiar.

“Wait a second,” Rose said the second she pulled away. Her eyes popped open wide. “What is that?” She pointed at the brand new lightsaber hanging from a clip on Rey’s belt.

“This old thing?” Rey smiled. She unhooked it from her belt and took a few steps back, giving herself space to demonstrate. She held the handle out in front of her and ignited the dual blades. Their yellow burned so bright that even in the all-consuming sunlight of the Lothal desert, they shone clear.

Rey felt the saber’s tug on her, begging her to really wield it. She spun it around, over her head, across her back, just as she would have done with her staff. The movements came naturally. She had been practicing her whole life.

Rose just watched her. She seemed to have a difficult time breathing.

“That’s—” Rose stammered. “I mean—um—that’s—”

She swallowed.

“It’s nice, right?” Rey said.

“Yup. Yeah. Nice. That’s one word you could use.” She kept staring at Rey, who stood in her resting stance, saber at her side, panting only slightly with exertion. Rey met Rose’s eyes, and the air around them turned thick and slow.

“I think I would use a stronger word,” a voice said, from so close it seemed ridiculous that they hadn’t noticed someone approaching them. Whatever had been about to happen between Rey and Rose was interrupted, and Rey would have been annoyed if it had been any other voice. But this was one that she would know anywhere, one that would make her heart light whenever and wherever she heard it.

“Finn!” she called, deactivating her saber and running to him. He was approaching them from the direction of the temple. She crashed into his open arms and wrapped herself around him.

“I’m really glad to see you,” he said while his head rested on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry we didn’t follow the plan, it’s just that—hang on.” Rey pulled back. “How did you find us?”

Finn shook his head, a smile spreading across his face.

“That’s a long story.”

Rose reached them then, and it was her turn for a full-body embrace from Finn. Relief washed over Rey when she didn’t feel an ounce of jealousy. Rose loved Finn the way she herself did, she was sure of that now.

“So, uh…new lightsaber?” Finn asked when all the hugs were done.

“That’s…a long story.”

Finn laughed, which made Rose laugh, and all of it together made Rey feel as though she would burst, so she laughed, too.

Finn led the way back to the Falcon, parked just on the other side of the temple. Rey and Rose followed close behind, hand-in-hand. Rey had a feeling they would be like that all the time from now on. Call it a Force feeling, she thought, smiling to herself.

When they reached the Falcon, they found Poe waiting on the boarding ramp. First thing, his eyes focused on Rey and Rose’s hands clasped together. His face lit up.

“You had an eventful time, I see,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“You could say that,” Rey said. She smirked at him. He seemed much more at ease now, which made her happy. Maybe he had had an eventful time, too.

“I always knew, you know,” he said as they entered the Falcon’s main corridor.

“Knew what?” Rey asked, because he couldn’t be talking about her and Rose. He wouldn’t have been so jealous and suspicious if he had predicted what would happen between the two of them.

“That you like women.”

Rey stopped in her tracks.

Her mind churned over what he said, ran it through again and again and again. She couldn’t think past it for a solid minute.

Because of course he was right. Of course the only reason romance had never appealed to her was that she had been imagining it with the wrong people. She had felt the difference the first time she held Rose’s hand. Now that the fact was right there, standing in front of her, she couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to realize. She liked women. Just thinking it felt like finding a part of her she hadn’t known was missing.

When Rey’s head finally stopped spinning, she look up to find that they were still standing in the middle of the corridor, Finn, Poe, and Rose all staring at her.

“Well, you could’ve told me,” she said.

“What!” From Finn. “You didn’t know?”

“No! Did you?”

“Of course! I think everyone did. I mean, Rey, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s pretty obvious.”

Rey looked at each of them in turn, slack-jawed. Rose burst into a fit of giggles.

“You’re so cute,” she said.

Rey wanted to be embarrassed, to feel stupid for being the last person to know about her own self, but the look in Rose’s eyes wouldn’t let her. What did it matter if she didn’t know until now? She had found out in the best way possible.

When Finn and Rose finally composed themselves, Poe led them all to the engineering bay/strategy room, where General Leia waited for them.

Rey’s spirits dropped. Here it came. The reprimand. The disappointment that she had failed her mission and let them all down. She would hear how Leia regretted ever trusting her and how she would never see another chance to lead in the Resistance again.

“You’re all right,” Leia said, rushing to Rey and embracing her.

“I—” Rey stood stiff as a board, completely caught off guard. “I’m so sorry, General. I failed to complete the mission.”

“Failed to even start it, I think,” Leia said. “But by the looks of it, you found your own mission.” She stroked the handle of Rey’s lightsaber where it hung from her belt. Leia’s quick eye missed nothing.

“Yes. I suppose I did,” Rey said. Leia didn’t even know the half of how right she was. Or maybe she did. She seemed to know most things.

Leia dismissed all of them but Poe after a short debriefing. Rey, Rose, and Finn sat at the curved booth in the main hold for a long time, swapping stories of all they had been through since they had separated. According to Finn, Poe’s team had been much more successful than Rey’s. Because of certain developments, they would be staying on Lothal a while longer than anticipated.

Eventually, Poe joined them. The four of them talked and laughed until Rey began to doze off on Rose’s shoulder. Then they all decided it was time for bed.

Again, Rey lay awake in her bunk thinking, regardless of how exhausted she was. At least this time, she wasn’t alone. Rose lay beside her, crammed onto the tiny mattress. She rested her head on Rey’s chest, and Rey spent more time than not with her face buried in Rose’s black hair, breathing in that smell of grease she had come to love.

“What happens now that we’re back in the real world?” Rey asked. The question had been weighing on her since the temple, since before she even knew why the answer mattered.

“Now…” Rose thought for a long time before continuing. “Now we keep fighting.”

Rey smiled.

“Yes. Fighting,” she said. “To save what we love.”

She kissed the top of Rose’s head. They spoke no more.

In her dreams that night, Rey saw no visions and heard no voices. No powerful and mysterious energy haunted the inside of her mind. Everything the Force wanted to show her—everything she needed to see—was already right there in her arms.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as promised: what happens after the battle of crait, but from poe's perspective this time.

Part II

 

Poe hadn’t been inside an X-wing in weeks. He took shifts flying the Falcon—all the remaining pilots did—but it wasn’t the same when they were gliding through hyperspace. There were no obstacles, no challenges, no _goals_. They were just floating in the void, and Poe was acutely aware of that fact every second of every day. He was restless to the point of bursting.

No X-wing and no pressing tasks also meant Poe had nothing to siphon his attention away from the thing that was really bothering him. One of the things, anyway. Not even the most important one, he reminded himself. The fate of the entire galaxy rested on the Resistance, and its back was seconds away from breaking under the strain. _That_ was what he should focus on.

“Hey,” Finn said, entering the cockpit where Poe sat idly behind the controls. Instantly, Poe sat up straighter, his heartbeat quickening.

_Never mind,_ Poe thought, _this is the most important thing_.

“Hey!” Poe said, and even in his elated state, he could tell it sounded too eager. He cleared his throat, but he couldn’t completely wipe the smile from his face. “It’s good to see you out and about again, buddy.”

He didn’t say, _It’s good to see you at all._

He didn’t say, _I almost thought you forgot about me._

“Well, Rey started nagging me, too, so I thought maybe it was time for a break,” Finn said.

“I didn’t mean to nag you, I was just—”

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t really mean it like that. I’m tired is all.” Finn took a deep breath, then looked Poe right in the eyes. “Thank you for worrying about me, Poe.”

Finn’s sad eyes with the bags underneath, coupled with the tiniest smile that lifted the corners of his mouth, threatened to simultaneously melt Poe’s heart into mush and shatter it into a thousand pieces. He was in way too deep.

Poe knew that he should ask about Rose. It was the right thing to do. She was the reason Finn had shirked food and sleep for the past forty-eight hours, and besides that, Poe should care about the answer anyway. She was a hero. She had saved his life. Well, she had saved Finn’s life, anyway, and that was basically the same thing. But so much baggage came with asking about Rose, and it was easier to pretend they were back at the base on D’Qar and nothing had changed. For a minute there, before Crait and everything leading up to it, Poe had been so sure… He shut that thought down before he could finish it. It didn’t matter now. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

“So, um. Where’s Rey?” Poe asked. He felt like a coward.

Finn collapsed into the seat next to Poe, swiveled around to face him.

“She’s with Rose,” Finn said. “She offered to look after her so I could get some rest or whatever.” He yawned through the word _whatever_ , completely ruining the blasé effect he was going for.

So that was how Rey had convinced him to leave Rose’s bedside. Poe had wondered. He hadn’t even thought of that tactic.

“I’m glad she did,” Poe said, skirting over the subject of Rose once again. He nudged Finn’s knee with his own. A strange look entered Finn’s eyes, and Poe worried he had gone too far. Normally, he wouldn’t be so touchy with a man who had no idea Poe was obsessed with him, but Finn always made him extra brave. Then Finn settled deeper into his seat, and Poe’s fear passed. Finn leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

“Now that I’m thinking about it, I feel like I could go to sleep right here,” Finn said. Butterflies leapt in Poe’s stomach at the thought of Finn sleeping beside him. Even if they were in the cockpit of a spaceship, sitting feet apart from each other.

“Have at it, buddy,” Poe said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He heard it. He knew it was a little too intense for their current situation. He didn’t care. It was true.

Eventually, Finn slumped further in his chair, his breaths slowed. Poe could’ve listened to him for hours. Poe _did_ listen to him for hours. His relief came in, raising her eyebrows at Finn’s sleeping figure, and Poe waved her off. There was nowhere else he wanted to be right now. With all of space in front of him and Finn by his side, it was easy to believe, for once, that everything would be all right.

As he sat there, silently memorizing every line of Finn’s face, from his eyelashes to his lips, Poe kept thinking about what he had said and how true it actually was. He would do every single thing in his power, for the rest of his life, to make sure nothing ever happened to Finn. Maybe, Poe realized, that was the reason this whole thing with Rose bothered him so much. It wasn’t just that she kissed him. It was that Poe was supposed to be the one keeping Finn safe. And in that moment, when Finn needed someone most, Poe had been helpless. What Rose had done, risking her life to save Finn, was supposed to be Poe’s. That kiss was supposed to be—

Just then, Rey burst into the cockpit.

“She’s awake!” she exclaimed. Then she looked around and realized Finn was asleep. At her entrance, he had sniffed and shifted slightly, but nothing more.

Poe, on the other hand, heard the news loud and clear. He felt frozen. He was happy Rose was awake. She deserved that. He was happy. There was nothing else to be. Except that Poe was a lot of things other than happy, and he hated himself for it.

“Great!” he said, doing his best to match Rey’s excitement. Apparently, it wasn’t convincing. She rolled her eyes as she threw herself down in the seat behind Finn, both legs swung over the side.

“How long has he been out?” she asked, instead of talking more about Rose. Poe got the feeling Rey wanted to avoid that topic, too.

“Hours,” Poe said. “Pretty much since he got here.”

“Good. He needed it. I was really starting to worry about him.”

“Pff. Starting,” Poe said. He didn’t feel the need to elaborate that he had been worrying about Finn ever since they crashed on Jakku in what now felt like another lifetime.

“Did he eat anything?” Rey asked.

“No. But he will. Especially when he finds out Rose is ok.”

Neither of them moved to wake him. He would have wanted them to, probably, but that was only because he cared less about taking care of himself than they did. Poe felt a certain appreciation for Rey, a certain kinship, as they sat in silence and watched hyperspace rush past the viewport. She was always looking out for Finn, just as much as he was. Poe was glad Finn had a friend like Rey. And Poe had other things in common with her besides caring about Finn as much as he deserved. They both had flying in their veins, and though they hadn’t talked about it, it was obvious that she liked women the same way Poe liked men. Actually, just the one man these days, but still.

“How long have I been asleep?” Finn asked, his voice low and stuffy with sleep. The sound startled Poe from his thoughts.

“Um…” Now that Poe thought about it, he had no idea how long they had been sitting here like this. He had lost track of time, maybe because he didn’t want this moment to end. “A while. How are you feeling?”

Finn grunted as he shifted in his seat and stretched his arms as far as they would go. The backs of his fingers grazed Poe’s ear, and Finn immediately pulled his arms back in. Poe tried to act like his heart hadn’t stopped, like the spot where Finn’s skin had touched his wasn’t still burning.

“I don’t know,” Finn mumbled, as if he were changing the subject from something uncomfortable. “A little better, I guess. My stomach feels like it’s trying to eat itself. Can we get some food?”

“Sure, buddy,” Poe said immediately, practically leaping from his seat to get Finn something to eat. Then Poe remembered. “Oh wait. Actually, there’s something I think you’ll want to hear first.” He nodded toward Rey, who hadn’t moved from her seat. A smile danced around her lips as she watched Finn turn around and notice her for the first time.

“Rey! What are you doing here? You were supposed to stay with Rose until she…” Finn’s eyes popped open wide. Rey smiled so wide that it covered her whole face. “Did she…?”

Rey nodded, and in the next second Finn was gone from the cockpit and running down the corridor. Poe smiled in spite of himself. Seeing Finn that excited, it was impossible not to.

“How long do you think it’ll be before he realizes he doesn’t know where she is?” Rey said, leisurely getting up out of her seat to follow Finn.

“It’s a small ship,” Poe said. “I’m sure he’ll find her soon enough.”

With both of them gone, the cozy little space felt cold and empty. Poe felt like he could see the shadows of them, like black holes opening up where they had been sitting just a moment before. His heart ached dull in his chest. But he stayed where he was. He was on duty still, though he had forgotten that until just now. It was an excuse, anyway. He didn’t want to follow them. He was glad Finn would be reunited with Rose because Finn would be so happy. Poe could imagine the look on Finn’s face when he met Rose’s eyes, open for the first time in weeks. He could imagine Finn running across the room and throwing his arms around her. He could imagine all the guilt bubbling up out of Finn, all the apologies that Rose would no doubt brush away. It wasn’t a favor that she had done, it was a duty. A necessity. That’s how Poe would’ve felt in her position, anyway.

But Poe, as he remembered constantly, was not in her position. He was only watching from the sidelines.

“General wants to see you,” the next pilot on duty said when she came to relieve Poe a while later. Poe’s brow creased as he thought over the past twenty-four hours. He didn’t remember doing anything that would get him into trouble.

“About what?” Poe asked. The other pilot shrugged as she plopped down in the pilot’s seat. Poe made a beeline for the strategy room, which used to be just an engineering bay. He wasn’t exactly eager to meet with General Leia if she was going to scold him for something, but he also didn’t want to run into anyone else on the way. Well, he didn’t want to run into Finn and Rose. He wasn’t ready to let go of the fantasy world in which Finn was his. Not yet.

When Poe entered the strategy room, Leia was staring intently at a star-map, which seemed to be focused on a single planet and its surrounding system.

“General,” Poe said, and she looked up. Relief washed through Poe’s churning stomach when she smiled at him.

“Poe,” she said. “I feel like I never see you anymore.”

“We live on a cargo ship,” Poe said. “Everybody sees everybody all the time.”

“And we still don’t talk as much as we used to.”

Poe opened his mouth to say that wasn’t true, but when he thought about it, he realized that it was. He saw Leia at mealtimes and during strategy meetings just like everyone else, but they hadn’t had a one-on-one conversation since they’d been aboard the Falcon. It was strange. Back on D’Qar, they had met in private at least once a day.

“Come here, I want you to look at this,” she said, gesturing to the star-map. Poe approached the table where she stood and examined the hologram planet that hovered there. Stars surrounded it, but there were no constellations he recognized.

“You’ll have to tell me what I’m looking at,” Poe said.

“It’s a planet, Poe.”

Poe rolled his eyes. “Ha, ha. Very funny. _Which_ planet am I looking at, then?”

Leia pressed a button on the table, and the star system faded away. In its place was a data screen that told about arid climates and a war-torn history.

“Lothal,” Leia said. “Heard of it?”

“I think so,” Poe said. “Way out in the middle of nowhere, right? It was under Imperial control until the rebel cell there took it back, and then…well. I don’t know what happened after that.”

“Not many people do. After the Empire fell, pretty much everyone forgot about Lothal except the people who lived there.” She gave him a pointed look. Now, he understood where she was going with this.

“Everyone, including the First Order.”

“Exactly. Even though Lothal housed a rebel cell in the days of the Alliance, that was a long time ago. And like you said, it’s in the middle of nowhere. What would the First Order want with that?”

“Are you saying this could be our new base?” Poe asked, perking up. If they found a new base, they could finally get off this ship. They could start rebuilding. They could do _something_ other than run away.

“No,” Leia said. “Or at least, not yet. All I’m saying for now is that we’re running out of fuel and food, and Lothal might be the place to get some more without the First Order finding out.”

“And if we happen to find some old rebel sympathizers who come running when they find out the great Leia Organa is looking for help, that’s just a bonus, right?” Poe said.

Leia smiled. “I’ve taught you something after all.”

Poe skimmed through the planet’s data file. There wasn’t much information of interest. Lothal had villages and cities and wildlife just like anywhere else. Other than some precious mineral resources and the territory battle between the Empire and the rebels, the place was fairly ordinary. A thought occurred to Poe.

“Why are you showing this to me and not everyone else?”

“You’re my Captain. The only one I have left. I wanted to get your opinion on what we should do before I got everyone else’s hopes up.”

“Oh.” Poe was stunned. Until this moment, he hadn’t even been sure he was a Captain. And he had never been second-in-command of an entire army. Granted, it was a very small army. But still, this felt like a huge moment. For him and Leia both. He wanted to thank her or assure her he would do a good job or maybe even hug her, but he worried any of that would ruin it. Instead, he accepted quietly that this was how it would be now. “Ok. Let’s talk about it.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and Leia’s eyes were full of warmth. Poe tried to convey on his face all the gratitude that coursed through him, all the admiration he felt for this woman who had shaped most of the things about him that were good.

“Let’s,” was all Leia said. They began discussing plans as if neither noticed what had just passed between them.

In the end, after several ambitious pitches from Poe and just as many reminders from Leia that even at the corner of the galaxy, they needed to be discreet, they decided on a simple supply run.  They would get a feel for the landscape (both physical and political) and go from there. Leia told Poe he shouldn’t expect to come away from the mission with anything other than food and fuel, but she had a spark in her eyes. As if she weren’t taking her own advice. As if she expected to find something more.

Poe left the strategy room buzzing. He had been restless before, but now it was worse. Now that he knew what their next move was, he wanted to make it immediately. He wanted to touch down on Lothal right now and improvise the mission as he had done a thousand others. But he also understood why that wasn’t an option. If there were any First Order allies on Lothal and they caught one glimpse of the Falcon, the Resistance would be over. They had to be smart about this. They had to be careful. They weren’t strong enough to start another fight just yet.

As he walked down the corridor, Poe ran the plan through his mind again and again, poring over every detail they had hammered out so far. Next thing he knew, he smacked right into someone turning the corner. Their heads knocked against each other, and Poe stumbled backward. Before he could fall, whoever it was grabbed him by the arms and steadied him.

“Are you—hey, there you are,” the person holding him said. Of course it was Finn. With the distraction of Lothal and the supply run, Poe had forgotten to think about him for the past few hours. It was the first time that had happened since they met. Now Finn gripped him tightly, their faces and bodies and everything else less than a foot apart, and it felt like taking a bucket of ice water to the face.

“Sorry, buddy,” Poe said. His nose ached sharply from the impact, so much so that his eyes filled with tears. Instinctually, he wanted to touch it, but he feared that if he moved, Finn would let go. Or step back. And Poe wanted him this close for as long as he could have it. He felt Finn’s warm breath on his face. He probably would have been able to smell it, too, if he could use his nose.

“Let me see,” Finn said. He gently prodded Poe’s nose, and Poe winced. “Sorry. I just want to make sure it’s not broken.” Finn moved his fingertips along Poe’s nose. Poe thought he might go into shock. He didn’t even feel the pain anymore. All he felt in the whole world was Finn’s fingers on his skin.

“I should run into you more often,” Poe said breathlessly. Finn’s fingers paused, his brow crinkled. Had Poe said that out loud? He definitely had not meant to say that out loud. He scrambled for a convincing excuse to cover it and came up with nothing. They just stood there, looking at each other in silence, for several seconds. Finn’s fingers still rested lightly on Poe’s nose.

Finally, Finn opened his mouth to speak, and Poe had never wanted to hear anything more than whatever Finn was about to say.

And then Rose turned the corner.

“Poe! It’s so good to see you again! I’m so happy you’re alive!” she said, flinging herself between him and Finn and throwing her arms around him. Poe patted her half-heartedly on the back, but his eyes were still locked on Finn over her shoulder. Finn looked at the ground and shuffled back a few steps.

So. This was going to be exactly the way Poe had expected. He plastered a smile on his face as Rose pulled away.

“I’m glad you’re alive, too,” he said. That much was true.

“Where have you been? Finn’s been looking all over for you.”

Under any other circumstances, the thought of Finn looking for him would have sent Poe’s heart fluttering, but now it just seemed like a cosmic taunt.

“I was in a meeting with General Leia,” Poe said.

Finn perked up. “What about?”

“Lots of things,” Poe said. He didn’t want to be here anymore. All the energy and excitement that had coursed through him earlier drained out of him in a steady stream. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

He pushed past Rose without so much as a goodbye. He told himself he wouldn’t look at Finn when he passed, but of course he did. Their eyes met, and Finn’s were as buttery soft as Poe had feared. He swallowed hard and kept walking down the corridor toward the crew’s quarters, leaving Finn behind.

…………………………………………………

For the next few days, any time Poe got to spend with Finn was the same. Rose was always there, and she was . . . fine. Honestly. Fine. But not a moment went by when Poe didn’t wish she was somewhere else. In front of her, a thousand things went unsaid between Finn and Poe, and those things hummed beneath every conversation they had.

At least now Poe had the supply run to distract him. Most of his time was spent strategizing and making preparations. He only had time to agonize over Finn when they sat beside each other during meals or when he lay alone in his bunk at night, unable to sleep.

Sometimes, when they all ate together—Poe, Finn, Rey, and Rose—Poe noticed a strange look in Rey’s eyes. Like she was silently obsessing over something, too. Any time she furtively glanced away from her food, he noticed, her eyes moved to Rose. He might have thought Rey had developed a crush if not for the deafening silence that had fallen between her and Rose. Where before they had talked and laughed together freely, now they would not even look each other in the eye. When one spoke, the other grimaced.

A thought occurred to Poe one night during dinner in the main hold. He was sitting beside Finn, stuffed into the circular booth around the small table so that their thighs pressed together. It was a miracle that Poe noticed anything other than the feeling of Finn’s leg sliding against his own every time one of them shifted, but he did. While Rose was busy talking to Finn, Rey’s eyes bore down on her with unusually intense concentration. It looked like she was seeing something that was invisible to the rest of them. And then Poe realized, maybe she was. Maybe it was a Force thing. He knew the basics of the Force—that it existed, that it bonded all living things in the universe, that it contained the light and the dark—but he had no idea how it actually worked for people who knew how to wield it. Maybe they could use it to read a person, to see beyond what met the eye. Rey stopped looking at Rose eventually, but Poe kept thinking about his theory. What if the Force was telling Rey something about Rose? What if it wasn’t good? A tangle of hope and dread rose in him at the thought of Rose betraying them all.

While his mind raced, everyone else carried on as usual. No one seemed to notice that Poe had gone silent, that he had not taken a bite of his food in several minutes. Finn was too busy with Rose to pay him any attention. A pinch of resentment tinged Poe’s thoughts, but he quickly snuffed it out. He would not be angry at Finn for caring about someone else.

That didn’t change the fact that watching the two of them together sent a stabbing pain through Poe’s chest. And on top of it all, now, was the idea that Rose might not be who she said she was. That she might hurt Finn. Of course Poe would never wish for that, but the most selfish part of him could not shake the image of a heartbroken Finn running into his arms for comfort.

As if from a thousand miles away, he heard Finn say something, heard Rose laugh in response. He could not bear all of it any longer. He stood, his eyes locked on Rey. Immediately, he felt the absence of Finn’s leg pressed against him like a phantom limb.

“I need to talk to you about the supply run,” he said. It was all he could think of to get her away from the others.

“Um,” she said. “Ok?”

Only when he saw how confused she was did Poe realize how little sense it made for them to discuss the supply run privately right now, after they had all spent the entire day going over the plan together. But it was too late to backtrack. He didn’t look at Finn or Rose as he led Rey away from the table, toward the engineering bay/strategy room. He feared he would see relief or even excitement in their faces at the prospect of being left alone together. He sensed that neither of them liked him hanging around all the time, but he didn’t need to see it.

When they reached the engineering bay, Rey was all business.

“Has the plan changed?” she asked.

“What?” Poe genuinely had no idea what she was talking about for a moment. Then he remembered his shoddy excuse for bringing her here. “Oh. No.”

“Then why are we…?”

Now that the moment had come to voice his concerns or hopes or whatever they were, Poe had no idea how to phrase this in a way that didn’t completely expose him. His theory felt stupid now, so close to the light, and he wished he had the sense to keep it to himself. Right now, though, it seemed he didn’t have any sense at all.

“Seemed like something was bothering you. Thought you might want to talk about it,” Poe said. It was a vague, harmless sentiment. Maybe, if he was right about _what_ was bothering her, she would answer all his questions without him actually having to ask them.

Except that Rey didn’t answer at all. Her eyes bulged a little, and she froze in place. Poe could see that something was churning behind her eyes and that she was working very hard to contain it. Apparently it hadn’t been a harmless sentiment after all. If he wanted justification for his irrational negative reaction to Rose, he was going to have to get it the hard way.

“Just tell me,” he said, his face burning with humiliation when his voice almost broke. He didn’t want to bring any of this to the surface. Or he wanted it more than anything. “Is it Rose?”

Rey’s tensed body relaxed a little, but now a strange look came over her face. Almost like she was just as embarrassed as Poe was in that moment. What could that mean?

“I don’t know if I would say she’s bothering me,” Rey said. “She’s very nice and everything.”

Her voice was hesitant, uncertain, and Poe seized on that. Maybe he was actually right about this. Maybe there really was something off about Rose. Maybe he didn’t have to feel so guilty about the way he acted toward her. The possible implications of that rushed through his mind, filling him with manic energy. Deep down, he really hadn’t expected to be right, but now he was invested.

“Yeah, I know that, everybody knows that,” he said. “But you’re acting weird around her. Why?”

Rey didn’t speak for a moment, but Poe could see in her eyes that she had something to say about this. His heartbeat quickened, pounding so hard that he could hear the blood pulsing through his ears. He didn’t want Finn to get hurt, he reminded himself over and over again in the silence. Finn’s safety and happiness were more important than Poe’s own feelings.

“I don’t know,” Rey said finally, and she sounded frustrated. As if she really didn’t know why she was acting the way she was. “I can’t explain it.”

But Poe needed an answer. He could tell something was going on here, and he felt like he would explode if he didn’t find out what was wrong. He recognized that he was too close to this, that he was being irrational, but he didn’t care.

“Do you have a bad feeling about her?” Poe asked, trying to steer his questioning in the direction of his theory. “You know, like a Force feeling or something?”

Rey laughed at him. “A Force feeling? Poe, I don’t think that exists.”

Frustration swelled in Poe’s chest, threatened to choke him. He wanted this to be over. He didn’t want to have to talk about Rose out loud any more.

“You know what I mean!” he said. “I’m just saying, I trust your intuition more than the average person’s, and if you think she’s not as great as she seems, I would believe it.”

“It’s nothing like that, don’t worry. She’s fine. She saved Finn’s life!” Rey said it as if Poe’s suggestion were ridiculous. It probably was. But Poe had hoped…or feared…well, he still wasn’t sure which of those to settle on, but he had at least _thought_ that Rey had a reason to mistrust Rose. Something other than his own reason, which was…less than substantial.

“Yeah. She did,” he said. Despite his best efforts to suppress the memory as it rose up to the forefront of his mind, Poe saw that moment on Crait as clearly as if he were there again. For a second, he had truly believed Finn was going to die. For a second, he had felt his lungs caving in on themselves, the world fading to grey around him as his vision zeroed in on Finn’s ship racing toward the laser cannon, toward the end of everything that mattered to Poe. And then Rose’s ship had come from nowhere to knock Finn out of harm’s way, and Poe had breathed for what felt like the first time in his life. His heart had soared, and anything in the galaxy had seemed possible. Until he saw them holding each other, and his towering hopes came crashing down into reality.

“Since you trust my intuition so much, do you want to know what I actually think?” Rey said. Poe blinked. He had forgotten she was there, where he was, what they were talking about. She stared at him with determination in her face. “I think you’re jealous of her.”

Hearing his most private thoughts spoken aloud by someone else sent a jolt through Poe, and he almost couldn’t recover. He had been in no way prepared for this.

“Why would I be jealous of her?” he managed to say through the dryness in his throat. He was confident that she would go no further than that.

He was wrong.

“Because she kissed Finn.” Rey said it like it was a challenge.

Poe swallowed. His brain was shutting down, and he didn’t know what to do or say. He thought he was the only one who knew how he felt about Finn. But if Rey knew, who else? Was it so obvious? Did Finn know? The humiliation of that thought burned in his cheeks, so he put his head down.

“Doesn’t have anything to do with me,” he mumbled. He had to get out of there. He couldn’t look Rey in the eye.

“Of course not,” Rey said. He still couldn’t look at her.

“Well, I’ve got some work to do,” he said, because he really needed to be alone, and he couldn’t wait for a good excuse to come to him. “Uh. Gotta prep for that supply run. See you later.”

He pushed past her and left the engineering bay as quickly as he could.

People lingered in the main hold and in the corridors, relaxing and talking after a long day of strategy meetings and preparations for their mission. Energy buzzed through everyone on the ship ever since Leia announced her plan to stop for supplies on Lothal and gave them something to work toward. People seemed more alive than they had in weeks. But Poe didn’t want energy right now, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

He wandered mindlessly through the corridor until he came to the cockpit. Somehow he always ended up there. He ducked inside and offered to take the controls for the rest of the current pilot-on-duty’s shift, because he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do at a time like this.

Once he was settled into the pilot’s seat with hyperspace streaming past the viewport in front of him, he felt his mind begin to slow down. There was still very little for him to do besides monitor the controls, but at least now they had a destination. Lothal’s coordinates were in the navicomputer, and every second brought them closer to the next step in saving the Resistance. This was the closest thing Poe had to a happy place since his X-wing had been destroyed on board the _Raddus._  

The first thing he thought about when he let his mind go free was Finn. Not whether Finn knew how Poe felt about him, not whether Finn felt that way about Rose. Just Finn. His pure heart and his kind eyes and his smile that never failed to take Poe’s breath away. Instead of remembering Crait, as he did far too often these days, Poe remembered the first time they met. The moment when Finn—who wasn’t even Finn yet—took his helmet off, and Poe suddenly had hope that he wouldn’t die there on Kylo Ren’s ship.

Warmth spread through Poe as he sat in the cockpit of the Falcon, and for a moment, he forgot the conversation with Rey. He forgot all the things he had been worried about. Nothing mattered except this feeling and these memories.

“There you are. I should’ve known,” said a voice behind Poe. He was in no way prepared when Finn entered the cockpit and plopped down in the co-pilot’s seat beside him. Poe’s palms went sweaty as he tried to clear his mind of every thought he had had since dinner.

“Where else would I be?” Poe said.

Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Not when the stars are out,” Poe said. He stared straight ahead, trying as hard as he could not to look at Finn. “What’s up, buddy?”

“Nothing, really,” Finn said. “Just wanted to see you.”

Fireworks exploded in Poe’s chest, and he felt the smile spread across his face before he could do anything to stop it.

“I’m glad for the company,” Poe said, even though he wanted to say more.

“Hey, since we’re here, how about a flying lesson?” Finn said.

Poe turned to face Finn, his brow furrowed.

“I didn’t know you wanted to learn to fly.”

“That’s because I’ve never talked about it before,” Finn said sheepishly. “But I don’t know. Hearing you and Rey talk about how much you love it makes me want to at least try. I probably won’t be any good at it anyway.”

“Don’t say that,” Poe said immediately. “You’d be great. You flew that bucket of junk on Crait, remember, and you were fine until…”

But Poe didn’t want to think about that anymore tonight. Finn was here, safe and sound and with him, and that was what Poe would focus on.

“Sure, but I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Finn said, skirting over the uncomfortable moment as easily as Poe could have wished. “And if you teach me, then the next time I’m trying to escape the First Order, I won’t need a pilot.”

Finn smirked, but the lighthearted words still stung Poe a little bit. The idea of Finn not needing him tore at the edges of his mind. It was perhaps one of his greatest fears.

“Not that I—” Finn continued after only a moment. “I mean, I’m glad I needed one the first time around. Look how that turned out.”

He nudged Poe’s shoulder. Maybe—probably—he was imagining things, but Poe thought he recognized a certain spark in Finn’s eyes. He tried to ignore the excitement expanding in his chest like a balloon being inflated.

“Of course I’ll teach you to fly, Finn,” he said.

Poe wished they were in his X-wing. He wished he could show Finn the joy of breaking through a planet’s atmosphere and suddenly feeling all of space expanding around him. Part of him wished he could show off the complicated maneuvers he had picked up over the years that earned him the title of best pilot in the Resistance. As it was, they couldn’t even drop out of hyperspace. All Poe could do was point to controls and explain what they did, and even though it seemed mundane to him, Finn hung on his every word. After Poe explained a control, Finn would run his hand over it and stare ahead intently, as if he were imagining what would happen if he actually pulled the lever or pressed the button.

Watching him reminded Poe yet again why Finn was so special. To Poe, Finn seemed like the smartest, most resourceful person in the galaxy. Even though he spent most of his life being brainwashed by the First Order, he could figure out solutions to problems Poe couldn’t even begin to understand. Poe had seen more and experienced more than Finn, sure, but he constantly felt like Finn was teaching him new things about the universe. And yet, Finn still wanted to learn more. Here he was, trying to fly on top of everything else. Just because he wanted to understand. Just because he wanted to unlock the mysteries of one more experience in the vast world around him. During the lesson, every time Poe’s gaze caught on Finn’s eyes, he saw that hunger reaching out for anything and everything it could get its hands on. And every time, Poe lost track of whatever he was saying.

“That’s about all I can do for you right now,” Poe said when they had been over every switch and knob on the Falcon’s console. “One day, when all this is over, I’ll take you out on a ship that’s free to fly wherever we want, and then I can really teach you.”

“This is great. Really,” Finn said. “Thank you, Poe.” His face was eager, and Poe could tell that he meant every word. A warm buzzing settled in Poe’s chest. It would have been an unbearable feeling if he wasn’t so used to it. The same thing happened every time he spent time with Finn.

“So,” Poe said. Suddenly he was hyperaware of Finn’s knee hovering barely an inch from his own. He looked up at Finn’s face. “What now?”

Apparently Finn didn’t feel the same tension Poe felt in that moment. He was still too focused on his lesson.

“Now I try,” Finn said, and with that, he began pointing out the controls again, explaining the purpose of each one as best he could. Poe had to step in and correct him a few times, but he was impressed with how much Finn had absorbed. He didn’t know why he was surprised at this point. Just about everything Finn did amazed him.

When Finn finished, they both sat back, staring out the viewport.

“How did you learn to fly, by the way?” Finn asked. “I haven’t heard that story.”

“Oh.” The question caught Poe off guard. “My mother taught me. She was a pilot for the Alliance. Started taking me up in her A-wing before I was old enough to remember it.”

Finn smiled. “So the stars are in your blood. I should’ve known.”

Poe felt a sharp pang in his chest. He hadn’t expected to think about his mother right now. It had been nearly twenty-five years since her death, and he had learned to live in a world without her a long time ago. Sometimes, though—now, for instance—he couldn’t help but imagine how things would be different if she were there, and in those moments it felt like he was losing her all over again.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” he said to Finn. Prompted by nothing at all, he added: “I wish you could meet her. My mother. She would love you.”

“Maybe I will someday. You could show me your homeworld. I think I would like that.”

The thought of it made Poe light-headed. Finn, walking the halls of his childhood home, talking to his father. In that image, too, he felt his mother’s absence.

“Sure, yeah, we could go there, buddy. But my mother, she uh—” He found that he couldn’t say it. Like he was eight years old again and hadn’t accepted yet that she was really gone. He pressed his lips into a line and shook his head as he swallowed hard against the lump swelling in his throat.

“Oh,” Finn practically whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t be. It’s—” Poe shook his head again. He didn’t understand why talking about his mother had suddenly become impossible, but nevertheless, it had.

A long, heavy silence fell between them. Poe’s mind flooded with memories he couldn’t shut out. When he glanced at Finn sitting beside him, Poe saw that he was lost in thought, too. His face was all screwed up, as if he was trying desperately to remember something. Finally, Finn spoke, his voice so soft Poe could hardly hear it.

“I don’t remember what my mother looked like,” he said. The look on his face screamed defeat. Poe had never seen him so hollowed out.

“Finn…” Poe had no idea what to say. He had no idea what Finn was feeling. Poe had lost his mother early on, yes, but at least he had known her. At least he had memories of laughing with her, learning from her, so that he carried a piece of her with him forever. Finn had nothing.

Poe wanted to wipe all Finn’s pain away. No one in the galaxy deserved it less. Poe felt an urge to personally squeeze the life out of every single First Order officer for what they had put Finn through, but even that wouldn’t help him now. So instead, Poe reached across the small space that separated them and slipped his hand into Finn’s own. Finn squeezed, gripping Poe’s hand tight. Neither of them looked at the other, but they sat like that, in silence, for a long time.

…………………………………………………

After that night, Poe had no time for quiet moments alone with Finn. He resented that fact, but there was still a Resistance to rebuild, and Leia was counting on him to be her second-in-command. He was busy every second of the next few days, doing research on Lothal, strategizing with Leia, briefing the other Resistance fighters on what their roles would entail. There almost wasn’t even time for him to think about that moment in the cockpit of the Falcon with Finn, feeling the warmth of their palms pressed together as they sat in the weight of the things they had shared. There almost wasn’t time for him to obsess over what it might have meant or to wish desperately that he could do it over again every day for the rest of his life. Almost. But there were still those hours when he lay alone in his bunk, dead tired but unable to sleep.

In the end, when everything was mapped out and decided, the plan for the supply run included two field teams and a security detail for the Falcon, which would serve as mission control. They would land the Falcon far away from any settlements. One field team, led by Lieutenant Connix, would travel in one direction to a small farming village, where they would pick up food. The other field team, led by Poe himself, would travel in the opposite direction to Capital City to get fuel. Poe felt a twinge of guilt that he ignored when he assigned Finn to his own team and both Rose and Rey to Connix’s. He told himself that it was for the good of the mission, that it was the best and most logical placement for everyone, but he could not deny his personal motivations.

As the day of the supply run drew nearer, Poe became even more restless than he had been before. After all the talking, all the planning, he was ready to _do_ the things they had laid out for themselves in such intricate detail. He was anxious to see how each step of their plan would go wrong, how they would think issues through and solve them as they went. He was ready to _go_.

The first of the issues arose even before the mission started. Just hours before their final group strategy session, the day before the supply run, Leia pulled Poe aside to speak in private.

“I’ve decided to change things up a bit,” she said. “Lieutenant Connix is going to stay here and oversee the Falcon’s security detail. Someone else will have to lead her team.”

“That’s easy,” Poe answered immediately. “Rey should do it.”

“You think so?” Leia asked, pursing her lips in thought.

“Of course. She has tons of field experience—even if most of it is pretty recent. She’s familiar with the kind of terrain she’ll be dealing with, and she’s good in combat if things go sideways. Not to mention she, y’know, has the Force.”

“You’re right. She would be a good choice,” Leia said. She thought in silence for a moment, and a look flashed in her eyes that was far too mischievous for the current conversation. “I was thinking Finn would be a good choice as well,” she continued.

Poe’s stomach dropped.

“No!” Poe said. “No, I think Finn, um—Finn isn’t—I mean, Finn should go with—” He stopped, breathed, composed himself. “Finn is already where he belongs.”

“Mm hmm.” Leia smirked. “If you say so. Rey it is.”

Poe left her with warmth in his cheeks and embarrassment churning in his gut. _For the good of the mission_ , he thought to himself. _Yeah. Sure._

Once they had their final briefing and Rey agreed to lead the second team, there was nothing left to do but wait. Poe knew that they had done as much as they could, that they had prepared for every foreseeable contingency—and he had overseen most of those preparations, so he trusted them. Still, something nagged at the back of his mind and wouldn’t let him relax. He couldn’t help but feel like he wasn’t actually ready at all.

Despite the anxious energy running through him, Poe was one of the first to retire to his bunk after dinner. He knew he wouldn’t get to sleep for a long time. Most nights, especially before a mission, it took at least an hour of staring at the dark ceiling while his brain wrestled through a thousand unrelated things before he could actually rest. And tonight he needed lots of rest. There was, when it came down to it, no telling what the next day held in store for him. Or for the Resistance. Or for the whole future of the galaxy.

But that was too far, he told himself as he turned over beneath his blanket. He could do nothing for the whole future of the galaxy right now. All he could do was sleep—and hope. He could always hope.

 

Just a few hours later, long before he would’ve felt rested and mentally prepared for a day as important as this one, Poe’s eyes flew open at the blaring of the alarm. There was no emergency, he knew. It was just the easiest way to get everyone on board the ship to wake up at the same time. Even so, the sound sent a jolt of panic through him and pulled him instantly out of bed, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He stepped into the bright corridor to find others stumbling out of their quarters, rubbing their eyes and yawning.

“This is it,” he said, half for them and half for himself. He smirked. “May the Force be with us.”

After checking in with everyone to make sure they were up and ready to go, Poe headed to the cockpit. Someone had to fly the Falcon through Lothal’s atmosphere, undetected, to the designated spot in the middle of the unpopulated desert region, and of course it would be him. He was the best pilot in the Resistance and the most eager to do some actual flying. He could not stop a smile from covering his face when the ship finally dropped out of light speed. Suddenly he found himself enveloped in an unending sea of clear, bright stars. Just below him, the huge mass of Lothal swelled, with its blending shades of tan and green surrounded by crystal blue patches of water.

As soon as Poe grabbed the controls, the gravity of the moment hit him: he was about to take control of _the_ Millennium Falcon for the very first time. This was the ship that had been piloted by Han Solo. _Luke Skywalker_. This was the ship that helped blow up the Death Star. That made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs. And now he was at the helm. He thought of his mother again and wished she could be there to share the moment with him. He wished that Finn were there, too.

But Finn was busy with his own duties, double-checking the knapsacks full of supplies for the journey and reminding everyone one last time how to determine if stormtroopers were present in the area. Poe had a job to do, too, and he needed to get out of his head and do it already. There would be time for sentiment later. Maybe. He hoped.

The Falcon slipped into Lothal’s outer atmosphere with no difficulty and no surprises. They didn’t encounter a single patrol. It seemed the planet was just as dormant as they had expected.

As he pulled in for a smooth landing in the sand, Poe held his breath, just like he did every time he landed a ship. It was a habit he had picked up when he was first learning to fly, and even after all these years and hundreds of landings, he couldn’t shake it.

Poe was making his way to the main hold to join everyone else when Finn stepped out of the refresher.

“Nice work,” Finn said, smiling. It dawned on Poe that it was the first time he had flown a ship with Finn in it.

“Thanks,” Poe said. “It’s usually much more chaotic.”

Finn fell in step beside him.

“Makes sense. You’re pretty chaotic yourself.”

It took every ounce of Poe’s self control to let the comment go. There was no time to interrogate Finn about what he meant by that—there was barely even time for the warmth that flared in Poe’s stomach when he heard it. The time for the mission had finally come, and he had to be Captain Dameron now, focused and ready to lead.

In the main hold, he checked in with everyone one last time. While he listened to Lieutenant Connix’s report on the security detail she was now running, his eyes wandered around the cabin. Unexpectedly, they caught Leia’s sharp brown ones from across the room. She smiled at him and nodded slightly. Poe never doubted himself too much when it came to Resistance operations, and he didn’t doubt himself now, but still. That nod and smile made him certain that he was doing all right. In that moment, he felt ready for anything, and he knew that was exactly what Leia wanted.

When the boarding ramp lowered, revealing the crisp blue sky and scorching sand hills of the Lothal desert, Poe moved to stand at the helm of his field team. It was a symbolic and pointless gesture, maybe, but Poe felt that, as the leader, he should be the first to step foot on this foreign planet.

“Be in and out as quick as you can, and don’t draw attention to yourself,” Leia said before the field teams departed. “But at the same time, be on the lookout for signs of people who might be, shall we say, interested in our cause.”

Poe knew it was a long shot, but his heart still beat a little faster when he imagined the possibility of finding allies, of taking the first real steps toward rebuilding the Resistance.

The two teams started down the ramp, and Poe had almost taken his first step onto Lothal when Leia called after them with one final reminder.

“Most importantly, remember. Be prepared for anything.”

Poe grinned to himself. He knew her so well.

Just like that, it was time to put theorizing and strategizing to bed. The mission had begun. Poe hovered nearby with the rest of his team while Finn said his goodbyes to Rey and Rose. He hugged each of them so tightly that Poe could almost feel it as he watched from several feet away. An unwelcome twinge of sadness ran through him when he realized how long it had been since Finn had held him like that. Poe swallowed hard and looked at the ground, trying to bury the feelings he really had no time for right now.

“Don’t worry,” Poe said when Finn rejoined their group with a creased brow. “They’ll be fine.”

He hoped they would, anyway. Rey had seemed uneasy about working with Rose, and maybe it was the premonition that Poe had suggested, but maybe it was nothing. He was confident that they would get on all right. Probably.

Finn nodded profusely. “Of course they will.”

“Ok, then.” Poe flashed his most roguish smile. “Let’s do this.”

Poe led the way toward a horizon that he knew from the many maps he had studied would gradually give way to grassy plains and, eventually, the stretch of metal spires that made up Capital City.  His team had seen those maps, too, and they followed him confidently. There was Finn, of course, who kept close, never more than a step behind Poe. The rest of the group was comprised of a pilot Poe had worked with several times and two relatively fresh technicians he had never even met before Crait. Neither of them had been in the Resistance more than a year.

The sun beat down on them as they plodded along. Sweat plastered Poe’s shirt to his back. He barely noticed. Finn was right there with him, and he talked to Poe the whole time they walked. He was all Poe could concentrate on—which, he recognized, was probably not the best use of his faculties while he led a vital, sensitive Resistance mission. But he didn’t care. They almost never had time just to talk like this, and Poe wanted to savor every minute of it.

“Please tell me your homeworld isn’t a desert planet,” Finn said after they had been walking for a few hours.

Poe scrunched his eyebrows together. “Why?”

“Because I’m excited to go there with you, but I think I’ve spent more than enough time in the desert for a lifetime.”

Poe’s heart skipped a beat. His mouth curved into a stupid, dopey grin of its own accord. He remembered their conversation about visiting his home on Yavin 4, of course, but he hadn’t expected Finn to remember it.

“If it is a desert planet, do you still want to visit?” Poe asked.

Finn’s eyes went wide. “Oh, I didn’t mean—of course I would—I mean, yeah, I still want to come. No matter what.”

They locked eyes for a moment, until Finn looked down at his feet. Poe felt like he was floating instead of trudging through a desert full of sand.

“Well, no worries anyway,” Poe said. “Yavin 4 is all forest. Plenty of shade.”

Finn smiled. “Perfect. I can’t wait.”

Poe bit his lip. “Me neither, buddy.”

He thought about the long road that lay between them here, today, and that moment. For the first time, he felt impatient for the end of the war. Before, he had always had such a hard time imagining his life outside of battle, but now, he found himself wishing they could hurry up and get this Resistance thing over with. He was ready to live a life where he was free to take Finn wherever he wanted to go, show him whatever he wanted to see. Teach him to fly. There was a whole galaxy full of things for them to do together. They just had to bring down the entire First Order before they could do them. And there was no guarantee that they would both survive until then…but Poe couldn’t stand to think about that.

Instead, he thought about how this mission would bring them one step closer to the end. New inspiration, a new sense of purpose, pressed him forward faster than before.

_This_ , he thought, glancing at Finn as he walked beside him, _this is what we’re fighting for._

After another hour or so, they crested a particularly tall sand dune to find that they had finally come to the end of the desert. The dune descended into a plain of grass waving in a light breeze. Far away, Poe could just make out the hazy shapes of buildings rising from the horizon.

“You see that?” he said to his team. “Almost show time. We’re getting close to populated areas, so be on the lookout.”

“For what?” asked one of the technicians.

Poe looked her over. She was so young. She couldn’t be older than twenty. If this were the Republic navy, she would still be in training, nowhere near a high level covert operation like this one. But they were not in the Republic navy.

“Anything,” he answered.

He tried to take his own advice, to stay alert and focused on the mission. They were almost to Capital City, and it was time to get serious. But as soon as they took their first steps into the sea of grass, he couldn’t help himself. He nudged Finn with his elbow.

“Are you happy now?” Poe asked. “No more desert.”

“Oh yeah, this is much better,” Finn said. He took a deep breath. “You smell that? That’s my favorite scent in the world.”

Poe sniffed, curious, but he smelled nothing. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you serious? You don’t smell that? It’s beautiful. There’s no name for it as far as I know, but I like to call it ‘sand doesn’t get in my nose when I breathe.’”

Poe laughed out loud. It wasn’t that he forgot Finn could be funny, it was just that the opportunity didn’t present itself very often.

“Ah, yes, I see what you mean now,” Poe said. “You’re right. That is nice.”

They sat down on the grass for a few minutes, resting before the next leg of their journey and all they would have to do when they reached the city.

“Everyone ready for this?” Poe asked. They all gave some sign of assent. “If you have any questions about the plan, now is the time to ask them.”

No one had any questions, of course. They had been over the plan again and again, every day. Poe just wanted them all to be comfortable letting him know if they were confused about anything. Leia had entrusted him with so much responsibility lately, making him her second-in-command, and he wanted this to go smoothly. He knew it wouldn’t, because nothing in the Resistance ever went smoothly, but he would do everything in his power to make sure it did anyway.

Finn sat a little apart from the others, staring out across the grass, a vacant expression on his face. He hadn’t responded to Poe at all. Poe sat down beside him and nudged him again. Poe was becoming so comfortable with this kind of casual contact that it almost didn’t send a thrill all the way through him, almost didn’t leave an electric tingling on his skin. Almost. 

Finn blinked hard, coming back to himself from a million miles away.

“Is everything ok?” Poe asked.

“Yeah, sorry,” Finn said. “It’s just…I’ve never seen anything like this.” He swept his gaze across the sprawling plain before them. “It’s so peaceful.”

Poe just looked at him. There was a softness in Finn’s voice as he spoke, a light in his face, that left Poe speechless.

“That’s probably a weird thing to say, isn’t it?” Finn said when Poe didn’t answer.

“I don’t think it’s weird at all.” Poe looked him right in the eye so Finn would know that he meant it. Finn’s next words seemed to swell up like a flood from somewhere deep inside of him, bursting out after being held back for too long.

“It’s so confusing seeing the galaxy as it really is after being told my whole life that violence and chaos is all there is,” he said. “It’s like, there used to be one way life could be, and now all of a sudden there are a million possibilities. There are deserts for me to hate and cities full of rich people who are terrible all on their own without any help from the First Order and huge fields full of grass with no purpose other than just to be. I’ve seen so much that I never thought I would see, and it’s great and beautiful and all that, but it’s just…” He sighed and left the thought hanging.

“A lot,” Poe finished for him. He turned his whole body so that he was facing Finn. “Listen. Finn. It’s ok for you to be confused. You have a whole lifetime of brainwashing to work through, and a whole huge galaxy to learn about. You’re just getting started. You don’t have to feel weird about finding something new.”

“Thanks, Poe.” He didn’t seem entirely convinced.

“I mean it,” Poe said. “You’re right, everything is confusing. Hell, I’m confused most of the time.”

A smile broke on Finn’s face. He nodded. “Yeah, ok.”

They sat for a few moments in silence, and the urgency of the mission began to nag at Poe again. As badly as he wanted to sit in this field and watch Finn smile forever, it was time they kept going. He had all but forgotten about the rest of his team.

“You know,” Finn said suddenly. He crept a tentative hand across the grass and rested it on top of Poe’s hand. “This is new for me, too.” His deep brown eyes settled on Poe.

The entire world stopped. Poe had no idea where he was or what he was doing there—he had no idea what thoughts were in his head. Finn’s eyes were all he saw, the warmth of Finn’s hand was all he felt. Those words, _This is new for me_ , ricocheted through his mind, shattering anything else that had been there before. _This_ , Finn said. _This._ And he was talking about Poe.

And then Poe knew that he should say something, but what could he say besides _I would do anything for you_? And why—he could not remember—was he stopping himself from saying that?

“Um,” was what came tumbling out of his mouth.

Something closed behind Finn’s eyes, some door Poe hadn’t realized was open in the first place. Finn pulled his hand back to his own lap. Was it panic that Poe recognized in his face?

“Just—having people who care about me. I’ve never had that,” Finn said. “And now I have so many. You, Rey, Rose. It’s nice. That’s…that’s what I meant.”

Rose. Her name brought Poe crashing back into himself. Right. She was the reason he couldn’t say everything he wanted to say to Finn. She was the reason Poe knew that whatever he thought had been happening when Finn took his hand was all his imagination. He sprang up from the ground beside Finn. He felt his cheeks burning, and he could not let Finn see that.

“That’s great, buddy,” Poe said. “I’m really glad.” He raised his voice so that the others could hear him, too. “Ok, time to go. We have a mission to finish.”

The reminder was more Poe talking to himself than anything else. He had a mission to finish. He decided right then and there that it would be the only thing he concentrated on for the rest of their time on Lothal.

_Remember what’s important_ , he told himself. But when he walked past Finn without even glancing at him, Poe felt like the only important thing was slipping through his fingers.

…………………………………………………

Slowly, step by step, the hazy shapes of Capital City resolved into individual buildings and towers. Before too long, Poe could make out a landing platform jutting out from the side of the tallest building, near the outskirts of the city. He could see no activity whatsoever at the moment, but he thought he recognized the shapes of ships docked there. Which meant the platform was functioning. Which meant it was exactly what they were looking for. He looked over his shoulder at his team, careful to avoid Finn’s eyes.

“Everybody see that platform?” he said, gesturing to it. “That’s where we’ll start. If they’ve got fuel and they’re willing to sell, this’ll be a quick in-and-out.”

If things really turned out that easy, there was a credit disc in Poe’s pocket registered to a fake name and loaded with more than enough of Leia’s credits to take care of the transaction.

“And if not?” asked C’ai, the Abednedo pilot that Poe had worked with before.

Poe shrugged. “Then...it’ll be something else.”

As they continued walking across the plain, the city growing nearer with each passing second, Poe felt Finn’s presence behind him like a burning coal on his back. He walked a few feet behind Poe, no longer trying to stay as close as possible, no longer talking to him about anything and everything. Something had changed between them like a light switching off, and as much as Poe tried to ignore it and focus on the mission, he couldn’t go more than a few seconds without wallowing in the empty, lonely feeling in his gut.

Maybe he was busy wallowing when the figures began approaching them from the direction of the city. Maybe that was why he didn’t see them at first.

“Incoming,” C’ai said, and then Poe was paying attention.

When he squinted, Poe saw two people—both humanoids with blue skin and long black hair—coming towards them, one from the far left and one from the far right. They seemed to be zeroing in on Poe and his team in a sort of V formation. Their hands swung, empty, by their sides, so they weren’t carrying blasters. They weren’t walking unusually fast, but they weren’t going slow, either. They definitely weren’t out for a casual stroll.

“What do we do?” asked one of the technicians. She was working hard to disguise the panic in her voice, but Poe heard it anyway.

“Stay calm,” Poe said. “Maybe they just want to talk.”

Even as he said this, he was trying to decide whether or not to get the blaster from his knapsack. On one hand, if these people, whoever they were, really did come in peace, the sight of weapons might scare them and cause unnecessary violence. On the other hand, if this was an attack, Poe didn’t want them to catch him empty-handed.

As both groups kept coming closer to their inevitable meeting point, Poe noticed a holster strapped to the thigh of the person coming from the right, and the one coming from the left definitely had something strapped to her back.

Blaster it was, then.

“Don’t do anything yet,” he said quietly to his team as he pulled the knapsack off his back. “But be ready.” He rummaged around for a moment until his hand hit the cold metal of the blaster’s handle. He gripped it tight and pulled it out, then looked back to make sure the rest of his team was doing the same. Finn was the only one not digging through his knapsack.

“Finn,” Poe said. “Your blaster.”

“I didn’t bring one,” Finn said.

Poe shook his head in confusion. “You didn’t—why?”

“I didn’t want one.”

Poe didn’t understand what Finn was saying at all. This situation was stressful enough without having to worry about Finn, of all people, having no means to protect himself.

“What are you—” Poe started, but there was no time for a conversation. He sighed shortly. “Fine. Stand behind everyone else, ok?”

He hoped it didn’t sound like pleading, but that was exactly what it felt like.

When they were close enough to their mystery visitors that he could make out the features of their faces, Poe checked over his shoulder to make sure Finn had followed his instructions. A tiny portion of the pressure in his chest released when he saw that Finn had in fact melted into the background of their small company. Poe’s hand lingered over the blaster where it hung from his belt. No, he thought, it would be stupid to walk up with his gun already drawn. At that point, he would be asking for trouble. But it only took a split second for someone to attack, and if he couldn’t draw fast enough… He settled for a compromise and left his hand resting on the handle, ready to detach it from his belt at a moment’s notice. He tried to make the gesture look casual, as if he hadn’t given it a second thought. The weight of the blaster hitting his thigh with every step, the cool metal against his palm, filled his mind.

When the two strangers finally met at the point of their vector no more than ten feet away from Poe and his team, they stopped. One, the shorter of the two, crossed her arms across her chest, while the other stood in a far more diplomatic stance, neck held high and hands clasped in front of her. They seemed to be waiting. Poe didn’t want to go any closer. Neither of the strangers reached for their weapons, but something about them made him uneasy. He held up a hand, and his team stopped in their tracks.

“Greetings,” said the taller stranger. The diplomat. “Welcome to Capital City.”

Right away, Poe knew he had been right not to trust them. Her voice was far too grand, far too flowery, for a place like Lothal. The shorter stranger, who looked him dead in the face with a sour scowl in her mouth, actually seemed less threatening in this scenario. Regardless, he would have to play along until he found out what they wanted.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said, with only a hint of sarcasm.

The tall stranger gave him a tight-lipped smile.

“You are not familiar to me,” she said. “Forgive me, but we don’t see many new faces here. Are you from Lothal?”

“Not at all,” Poe said. “We’re from the Yavin system.” He had learned from Leia that when it came to cover stories, the best lie was inches from the truth.

“And what brings you here?” She tilted her head in what was probably supposed to be a genial manner, but Poe saw only cold analysis in the gesture.

“Necessity. Our travels have lasted longer than we expected, and we’re nearly out of fuel.”

“I see,” she said. There was a long pause before she continued. “What kind of business are you and your crew working in, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Her voice shifted only slightly, but Poe could tell that she was eager for his answer. Now they were getting to the heart of why these two had come to “greet” them. Poe smirked.

“We’re…importers,” he said. _Smugglers_ , he meant. They had come in the notorious Millennium Falcon, after all. When satisfaction shone in her face, he knew that she understood. Her eyes were hungry now, her body growing more and more agitated. Her diplomatic act had almost completely fallen.

“I don’t see a ship,” she said, gesturing to the empty plain. “It’s a shame that you had to walk so far in the heat, when there’s a perfectly good landing platform in the city.”

“Well, you see, we’ve got some, let’s say, _sensitive_ cargo, on our ship, and we didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention.”

At the mention of cargo, the two strangers locked eyes, and Poe’s suspicions were confirmed. They were bandits.

The next few seconds flew by so fast that Poe hardly had time to keep up with what was happening.

From behind both strangers’ backs sprang an extra pair of arms, and each of these four new hands held a blaster pointed at someone on Poe’s team. His stomach dropped as he remembered that Finn didn’t even have a blaster. He would be the easiest to pick off. Poe swung around, searching for Finn, certain that it was his turn to sacrifice himself to save Finn’s life. He had wished for the opportunity one too many times.

As soon as he turned his back on the bandits, he heard the bolts of energy fire from their blasters, saw Finn’s eyes go wide, and knew that this was it. Something told Poe he should close his eyes, let the gravity of his final moment sink in, but he couldn’t bring himself to take his eyes off Finn. If he was the last thing Poe would see in his life, that wasn’t so bad. In a desperate gesture, Finn threw his hands up as if he would catch the bolts themselves, and then…

Nothing happened. There was no bright white light, there was no fading into darkness. Poe blinked, and he was still standing there, in the grassy plains of Lothal, watching Finn. Finn’s hands pushed against the air, so hard that Finn gritted his teeth with the strain of it. New beads of sweat dripped down his temples. Poe could make no sense of what he was seeing. What was Finn doing? And perhaps more importantly, _why wasn’t Poe dead yet?_

Poe turned to find the most amazing and confusing thing of all. Four bright red bolts of energy, one from each blaster, hovered in the air between Poe and the bandits. Both of them had frozen in fear, their eyes wide. They understood what was happening even less than Poe did.

A memory pricked in the back of Poe’s mind. He had seen this once before. On Jakku. Kylo Ren had stopped blaster fire in midair simply by raising his hand. Using the Force.

The truth hit Poe like a sack of rocks to the head. _The Force._

Finn screamed under the strain of his effort, pushing his hands out further and further. As he did, the energy bolts inched back toward the bandits bit by bit. Now that Poe understood what was happening, he had the sense to dive out of the way, in case Finn lost his grip.

But Finn didn’t lose his grip. He kept pushing until the bolts returned to their source, and with a great, deep breath, he let go. The explosion of the plasma bolts returning to life knocked the bandits back several feet, where they lay sprawled out on the ground, unconscious. Immediately, Finn’s legs buckled beneath him, and he collapsed into the grass.  

After that, Poe didn’t care what had just happened or what it meant. All he cared about was Finn’s limp figure lying face-down on the ground. Terror seized Poe like it never had before, and his blood turned to sharp, cold shards of glass ripping through every inch of him.

“Finn!” The name fought its way up from somewhere deep inside Poe, tore his vocal cords as they screamed it of their own accord.

He scrambled over to where Finn lay. As gently as he could, Poe turned him over onto his back. He cradled Finn’s head in his lap.

Finn’s chest rose and fell, filling Poe with a joy so sudden and so violent he felt as though he would explode. Tears sprang into his eyes, poured down his cheeks, and he didn’t bother to wipe them away.

Finn’s eyes twitched once, twice, then stared up at Poe. Confusion entered them immediately as Finn reached a hand up to touch the wet spot on Poe’s cheek.

“Why are you crying?” Finn asked, his voice weary and hoarse.

Poe burst out laughing. He was so happy, there was nothing else he could do. Finn stroked his fingers softly across Poe’s cheeks, wiping the tears away for him.

“What happened?” Finn asked.

Poe shook his head slowly, a smile he couldn’t contain still lighting up his face.

“Buddy,” Poe said, “you tell me.”

“I don’t really know.” Finn crinkled his brow as if it was difficult for him to remember. “I saw them shoot at you, and I panicked, and then…” He hesitated for a long time. “I don’t know how to explain it. Something told me I could stop it from happening if I tried. So I tried.”

“You saved my life.” Poe was in awe. Finn always found a way to be even more incredible than he already was, even when Poe thought that was impossible.

Finn’s eyes went wide. He sat up suddenly.

“Hang on,” Finn said. “Did I just…did I just use the Force?”

“Yeah. I think you did.”

“I didn’t know I could do that,” Finn mumbled, staring down at his own hands. For a long time, he just sat there and looked at them. The look on his face shifted from confusion to wonder to fear and back again.

“Are you ok?” Poe asked after several minutes had passed and Finn had said nothing.

“Yes,” Finn answered. “Maybe. I just…I can’t believe this. It’s so…”

“It’s amazing,” Poe said. “You’re amazing!”

Finn cracked a smile. He finally looked up at Poe.

“It is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Finn said. “It feels like I’ve been waiting to do that forever without even knowing.”

“And this has never happened before? You’ve had plenty of opportunities to use the Force. You fought Kylo Ren, for crying out loud. With lightsabers. If that wasn’t enough to wake it up inside you, why this? Why now?”

“Because it was you,” Finn answered without hesitation.  As confident as his words were, the look in his eyes was tentative, fragile.

Poe’s breath caught in his throat. He felt the blood rushing into his cheeks. An instinct told him to look away, to stand up and turn his back so that Finn wouldn’t see his reaction. So that Finn wouldn’t see how he felt.

But…Poe had almost died. Not in the throes of a glorious battle. Not somewhere in the vague and distant future. Right here, on a dinky backwater planet during a supply run. Right _now_. He had always known that he could die at any moment, and that joining the Resistance had made it even less likely that he would live through any given day, but the full weight of that had never hit him until now. He was done hiding. Especially from Finn.

He took a deep breath before the plunge.

“Listen, buddy,” Poe said. “I would do anything for you. I need you to know that.”

His words felt empty and pointless and stupid compared to what Finn had just done for him, but at least he had finally said them. And he meant them, with every ounce of his being.

There was a split second, before Finn reacted, when Poe was certain he had just ruined his life. When he was certain he had misread Finn’s meaning, and now nothing would ever be the same between them again.

In the next second, he saw that he was half right.

Finn’s whole face lit up like the sun rising in the morning, soft and pure and bright. Before Poe’s relief had time to sink in, Finn had closed the distance between them.

Finn’s lips pressed against Poe’s with a force that was equal parts eager and tender. Both of their hands searched for the other’s face, hair, body, _anything_ in a clumsy tangle. Poe could tell that Finn had never done this before, that he had no idea about what he was doing except that he wanted to do it. Poe didn’t care. In fact, that only made it better, because it was so distinctly _Finn._ It was perfect. It was more than perfect.

Then it was over. In the space just after the kiss, they hovered there, each breathing in the other.

“I’ve been waiting to do that, too,” Finn said.

Poe smiled and shook his head because he couldn’t speak just yet. He held Finn’s cheek in his hand.

“Um…Captain?” said a voice from a thousand light years away. With a shock like plunging his face into an ice bath, Poe remembered where they were. He remembered that their team included three other people. His cheeks burned.

Poe stood and turned, straightening his rumpled shirt as he went, to find C’ai and the two technicians standing together a few feet away. They had tried to give Finn and Poe their space, to let them have their moment in private, but there was only so much they could do in a wide open field with nowhere to go.

Poe cleared his throat.

“Sorry about that,” he said lamely. He didn’t know what else to say.

He was about to suggest that they get the mission back on track—even though it was impossible for him to think about anything other than the feeling of Finn’s lips right now—when one of the bandits stirred in the grass and sat up. Before he could even think about it, Poe drew his blaster and aimed it at the figure of the shorter, more blatant bandit. She sobered up immediately, all the dizziness leaving her face in an instant.

“If you kill me, my people will come for you,” she said.

“And if I don’t?” Poe answered. “You’ll just walk away and pretend like this never happened?”

“Yes.”

Poe laughed a mirthless laugh. “You don’t really expect me to believe that.”

Of course, he wasn’t going to shoot her if he could avoid it, but she didn’t need to know that.

The other bandit stirred, sat up, blinking.

“C’ai,” Poe said. “Cover her.”

C’ai pointed his blaster at the taller bandit. She didn’t seem to care, or even notice. There was a look of wonder in her face.

“You,” she said, pointing a long, blue finger at Finn. “You’re a Jedi.”

Finn’s mouth fell open. “Me?” he said. “No, I’m not—”

“Don’t deny it,” she said. “I’ve heard the stories. Only a Jedi could do what you just did.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said her companion. “Jedi aren’t smugglers.”

“Uh, ever heard of Han Solo?”                                         

Finn cut in. “Han Solo wasn’t a Jedi.”

The taller bandit rolled her eyes at him as if they were friends having a casual conversation, as if Poe and C’ai didn’t have their blasters trained on her and her companion.

“But he was still a Rebellion hero. And a smuggler. So my point stands.” Suddenly, her eyes went wide. “That’s it! You’re not smugglers, are you? You’re Resistance!”

Poe’s stomach dropped again. They hadn’t even reached the city yet, and their cover was already blown.

“What are you talking about?” Poe said. He kept his voice completely even. No one could see how much he was panicking. “I told you, we’re importing—”

“You don’t have to lie anymore,” said the tall bandit. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re really good at it. I totally believed your story until that one decided to show off his Jedi powers.” She smiled at Finn.

“I’m not a Jedi,” Finn said. He sounded so uncomfortable that Poe glanced back at him. After what Finn did with the plasma bolts, Poe would have said that yes, Finn was definitely a Jedi, but apparently Finn himself didn’t believe it. Poe wished they had time to talk about it, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

Like the fact that this bandit knew they were Resistance. Now they would definitely have to get rid of these two, Poe thought, and it was a shame. He was starting to think maybe they weren’t so bad after all.

“Don’t worry,” the tall bandit continued enthusiastically. “You’re safe with us. We’re—”

“Shut up!” said her short friend. “We have no idea who they are.”

“They have a Jedi!”

The short one eyed Finn suspiciously. “He says he’s not a Jedi.”

There they went again, carrying on a conversation as if they were in no danger of being shot. Poe stopped them before they could completely forget he was there.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “We’re safe with you? What’s that supposed to mean? You just tried to shoot me like five minutes ago.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said the tall one. “Wouldn’t have done that if I knew you were Resistance. But you said you were strangers with a ship parked way out in the middle of nowhere, and we really need a ship, so—”

The short one groaned in frustration. “Would you stop telling them things?”

“It’s fine! Come on, don’t you see it? They’ve got Resistance written all over them. Especially that one.” She cocked her chin at Poe. “And, do I need to say it again, they have a _Jedi_.”

The short one narrowed her eyes at Poe, looked him up and down. Finally, she sighed.

“Fine,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe. But maybe isn’t enough for you to start flapping your mouth!”

Poe kept losing track of the conversation. What were _they_ keeping secrets about? Why did they care if Poe and his team were Resistance?

“Someone explain what’s going on before I get annoyed and start shooting,” Poe said.

The bandits made eye contact, and both of them laughed out loud.

“I don’t know if you’re Resistance or not,” said the short one. “But whatever you are, I know you aren’t going to shoot us. You would’ve done it already.”

Poe hated that they had figured him out so easily. They were right, now that they didn’t seem to be a threat, he had no intention of killing them. But that didn’t mean that he trusted them, or that he didn’t want them to be afraid of him.

“Start talking, or we’ll have to test that theory,” he said, trying to keep his voice as cool as possible.

“Oooh, I’m terrified,” the short one said with a smirk.

“Look, you don’t have to threaten us,” said the tall one. “We’re going to tell you everything.” She looked at her friend. “Right?”

The short one sighed again. She reached up with her lower set of arms and rubbed her forehead while the shoulders of her other arms shrugged.

“I suppose,” she said.

Poe kept his blaster pointed squarely at the shorter one and never took his eyes off of her, in case this was all a ruse. He couldn’t imagine what would make these people care about the Jedi or the Resistance or Han Solo. At least now he didn’t have to worry about Finn not being able to defend himself.

“What I was going to say before my delightful sister cut me off,” said the taller one, side-eyeing her shorter companion, “is that you’re safe with us because we’re Resistance, too.”

Poe’s brain refused to process what she said. A Resistance outpost on Lothal, of all places? One that he didn’t know about? That _Leia_ didn’t know about? It was impossible. And if they were really Resistance members, they were not very good ones. On Crait, Leia had sent her signal out to the farthest reaches of the galaxy asking for help, and no one had answered. Despite all of this, a spark of hope ignited in Poe’s belly.

“Say more,” Poe said. He needed more information before he could decide if she was telling the truth or not. She looked disappointed, but she continued anyway.

“Ok,” she said. “Not the grand reaction I was hoping for. Anyway. We’re not really Resistance, per se. I mean, we’re not official or anything. But we’re on your side.”

“Some of our elders were alive during the Empire’s occupation of Lothal,” the shorter one said with a solemn expression. “They remember what it was like to live under the boot of a regime that would rather see you dead than out of line.”

“The First Order stopped here once, about a year ago,” the taller one continued. “They were searching for someone, I don’t know who. But as soon as the elders saw stormtroopers on Lothal again, roughing people up, interrogating them in the streets, they knew they had to do something to keep history from repeating itself.”

“So they…what? Ran the stormtroopers off?” Poe said, trying to fill in the gaps. He had to admit he was enthralled by their story. It was exactly the kind of stuff the Resistance was made of. Exactly what had made him join in the first place.

“Are you kidding?” the shorter one said. “They would’ve come back with a star destroyer and killed everyone on the planet if that happened. Our leaders are smarter than that. They just started gathering resources, gathering people to their cause, real quiet like.”

Poe nodded, impressed. Even though he probably would’ve run the stormtroopers off if it had been him. By now, he had forgotten about the blaster in his hand.

“How many of you are there?” Poe asked.

The two made eye contact again, deliberating. Something in the taller one’s face conceded. She had finally lost an argument.

“We’ve already said more than we’re supposed to,” she said. “If you want to know more, you’ll have to come back to our base and talk to our Captain.”

Suspicion rose in Poe again. This could easily be a trap. It would be stupid to follow two complete strangers to an undisclosed location on a foreign planet. And yet…Poe trusted them. Maybe it was the look in their eyes when they talked about fighting the First Order, or maybe it was the fact that the tall one insisted on calling Finn a Jedi, Poe didn’t know. But however they had done it, they had convinced him they were telling the truth.

“What do you think?” Poe asked his team, because he could be wrong sometimes.

When he turned to them, he saw a fire and determination in the eyes of the young technicians that made him smile. Their faces reflected what he felt. They were so new to this world, and so full of hope, despite everything that had happened to them in the past few weeks.

“I say we go,” one of them said.

“It’s worth the risk,” the other agreed.

“I like your enthusiasm,” Poe said. “But still. We have to be careful. Can’t go getting ourselves killed. C’ai?”

“I think we should contact the Starbird and ask for instructions,” C’ai said. The Starbird was Leia’s codename. Poe had a comm linked to the Falcon, for use in dire emergency only. The signal was scrambled and encrypted tenfold, but they couldn’t take any chances. If a First Order sympathizer (or anyone looking to make a fortune selling information) hacked that signal and tracked the location of the Millennium Falcon and General Leia Organa, the First Order would have Lothal locked down in the blink of an eye.

Was this enough of an emergency to risk giving Leia away? Poe thought hard. He remembered the look in Leia’s eyes when she first mentioned the possibility of finding allies on Lothal. He already knew what she would tell them to do if they called.

“No,” Poe answered. “Not yet.”

Finally, he turned to Finn. Whatever Finn said about being a Jedi, there was no doubt he had a connection to the Force. And Poe was still convinced that the Force could give warnings about people (Rose, for example…but he wouldn’t think about that now).

“Finn, buddy, you feeling anything?” Poe asked, his voice soft as he remembered the impossible fact that they had kissed just minutes ago. Finn had kissed him, and here he was interrogating not-bandits instead of basking in the joy of that moment. Poe wished once again for the end of the war and the Resistance and all of it, and the start of a different life.

Finn closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  He stood utterly still and quiet for several seconds.

“I think…” he said finally. “I think they’re safe.” His eyes flew open then, and an apology entered his face. “I mean, I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m doing. But…yeah. I think we can trust them.”

Finn’s backtracking made Poe’s heart ache—why was Finn the only one who didn’t see how incredible he was?—but it still wasn’t the time to talk about it.

“Well, that’s enough for me to believe it,” Poe said, injecting his voice with confidence in the hope that Finn would notice. He looked at the two strangers. “Lead the way.”

Still, Poe kept his blaster at the ready, and he motioned to the others to do the same. They followed the bandits-turned-allies at a distance, not wanting to get too comfortable with them just yet. Everyone except Finn. As soon as they began walking toward the city, Finn caught up to the two of them and began asking a million questions. Were they from Lothal originally? What was life like here? Where were their families?

The tall one answered each question, amusement shining in her face. From where Poe stood, she and Finn looked like old friends catching up after a long time away from each other. Finn could make anyone feel like a friend, Poe thought, smiling to himself.

As they entered Capital City, slipping into an alley between two soaring buildings on the city’s edge, Finn asked a question Poe himself should have asked already.

“So, what exactly do you do to support the Resistance from way out here?”

“At this point, we’re mostly gathering resources,” answered the tall one. “You know, food, fuel, equipment. Supporters, most importantly. It’s not as easy as it sounds, though. We have to stay way under the radar. There may not be a First Order presence on Lothal, but there are an awful lot of people here who would sell us out in a heartbeat if they even heard a whisper of the word Resistance.”

“In case you were wondering, we did get your signal,” the short one said quietly, speaking for the first time since they had begun their trek to the city together. “The one from General Organa. We wanted to help, really…we just don’t have any ships yet.” She sounded genuinely sad.

Poe had been wondering, in fact, why a band of people who claimed to fight for the Resistance had not come to their aid on Crait, when they thought they had arrived at the end of all things. That had been one of the main questions keeping him from fully trusting their story. Finn met Poe’s eyes now with gentle reassurance, as if he knew what Poe was thinking. As if he had been searching for this answer on Poe’s behalf all along. Poe nodded to him.

“That’s why we were so…um…eager…when you mentioned your ship,” said the tall one. “We’re kind of desperate. It feels like there’s so much to do, but we can’t do any of it because we’re stuck on this rock.”

“I have a feeling all of that is about to change,” Finn said, smiling at her. Watching him, Poe couldn’t help but smile, too—it was a reflex, as natural as scratching an itch on his nose.

Their two new friends—and they were all friends now, thanks to Finn, walking together in one big group as if they had been that way from the beginning—led Poe and his team through the city using mostly alleyways and dark corners. Finally, just as the sun was about to set, they stopped in front of a tiny residence. Poe, who had been expecting a much grander headquarters, was confused. He had to remind himself that these people were working in the shadows, with limited resources, building a movement from the ground up. They didn’t have to be impressive yet.

When they entered, Poe found a bare and empty central room. A single table sat in the center, below the light fixture. It could hardly seat six people. A short hallway shooting off of the main room to their right contained two doors, one on each side. The space was stagnant, still.

“Where is everyone else?” Poe asked.

Both of the not-bandits’ brows wrinkled.

“There’s no one here but us,” the tall one said.

“But you said—” Poe’s mind reeled. Was this really it? Two people in a dinky old shack? The sting of disappointment pierced him. “I don’t understand. You talked about your leaders, you said you were gathering supporters.”

Realization dawned on her face, and she busted out laughing.

“You think this is our base?” she said between heaves of giggles.

“Oh—I—yeah. Yeah I did.” Poe felt foolish now. But he also didn’t understand what they were doing here if it wasn’t their base.

“This is a safe house we use when we have business in the city,” she said. “We can’t just establish a Resistance headquarters in the middle of the most populated area on the planet. I said we’re staying under the radar, remember? Our base is way out in the middle of the desert. It’s too late to travel all the way there tonight. The desert freezes when the sun goes down.”

Of course. It all made perfect sense. Poe felt the disappointment flush from his body, felt the reignited spark of hope flood through him to replace it.

Now that Poe knew they were stuck here until morning with nothing to do to further the mission, his mind began to wander to other things. Well, to one thing. Probably the only thing it would ever wander to again: the feeling of Finn’s lips on his.

He had a thousand things to say to Finn, a thousand things to ask him about, and now it seemed they finally had time for all of it.

Everyone had separated into groups, scattered around the main room of the house. C’ai and the shorter of their new allies were examining the two enhanced blasters she kept strapped to her back. The taller one was engrossed in a story she was telling the two young technicians, who drank in every word. Finn stood alone, watching them all from a corner of the room. Waiting, it seemed, for exactly what was about to happen. Poe approached him, biting his lip. Suddenly his palms were sweaty. Why was he nervous all over again?

“Hey, buddy,” he said to Finn. “You wanna talk?”

“Yes,” Finn said, nodding emphatically. “Definitely.”

Poe dipped his head toward one of the doors in the hallway, and Finn led the way. No one seemed to notice as they quietly slipped into the side room. When the door slid shut behind them, it cut off all sounds from the main room. They might as well have been the only two people in the world.

Of all the things he needed to say to Finn so desperately, Poe suddenly couldn’t remember one. Now that the moment had come, he had no idea where to start. There was so much inside of him begging to be let out—how could words hold all of that?

“So, hey,” Finn said finally. “I just wanted to say sorry about earlier. I know it was weird. I guess I was just confused. But I really don’t want you to be mad at me, so can we please just forget about it?”

“You’re sorry? For what?” Poe wracked his brain, but he couldn’t think of anything Finn had done that he would need to apologize for. Especially something important enough to be the very first thing they talked about after everything that had happened that day.

Finn looked down at his feet. “You know. When I kissed you. I didn’t mean to do that.”

Poe froze. “Oh. You didn’t?”

When Finn looked at him again, there was that same fragile look in his eyes from before. As if he was afraid to keep speaking, or afraid of what Poe would say next.

“Didn’t you think it was weird?” Finn asked.

“No!” Poe said immediately. He actually laughed at how ridiculous Finn’s question was. “Finn. It wasn’t weird. It was…”

All the words in Poe’s head tripped over each other trying to reach his mouth, trying to be the one that got to describe the feeling of kissing Finn. But none of them were good enough. None of them could communicate the full weight of what he wanted Finn to know in that moment. Eventually, he settled for the one that came the closest.

“Everything,” Poe finished.

A wave seemed to roll over Finn’s body, stilling his fiddling hands, loosening his shoulders, and painting his face with relief.

“Really?” he said, his eyes lit brighter than stars.

“Of course,” Poe said. He stepped closer to Finn, took his hand. The rest of the words fell out of him in a heap. “Finn, I’ve wanted this since the second you took your helmet off and told me you wanted to escape the First Order with me. You’re the best person I’ve ever met, and I’ve never been happier in my whole life than when I’m with you. The fact that you would even want to talk to me is mind-blowing, and this…” Poe lifted their intertwined hands. “This is beyond anything I even dared to hope for.”

Finn’s eyes went wide in amazement. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because I never thought you would—”

Finn interrupted him with a laugh. Before Poe knew what was happening, he felt Finn’s warm hands on his cheeks.

“How could I not?” Finn said. “You’re the very first person who ever treated me like a human being. You gave me my name, Poe! Earlier, when I was talking about seeing all the possibilities in life for the first time—you’re the one who showed them to me. You show me every day.”

Warmth sunk into the core of Poe’s being. He couldn’t believe that Finn— _Finn!_ —was talking to him like this. Why had they held back for so long? What had stood in their way?

Poe remembered the pangs of jealousy that had tormented him for weeks. On reflex, he pulled his face away from Finn.

“But what about Rose?” Poe said. “It really seems like you—” _Love her_ , he was going to say, but he couldn’t make his lips form the words. He had spent so much time thinking it that saying it out loud seemed impossible. He didn’t want to breathe life into his fears.

Finn’s brow creased. “You think I want to be with Rose? Is that why you’ve been acting so weird?”

“I mean, she kissed you, and you’ve been spending so much time together. She seems to make you really happy.”

“Rose is my friend,” Finn said. He reached out to hold Poe’s chin, nudged his head up, and held his eyes before continuing. “Listen to me. She’s my friend. I know what happened on Crait, but I’ve talked to Rose about it, and she agrees with me that we’re just friends. She’s very important to me, and you’re right, she does make me happy.” Finn took a deep breath. “But the way I feel about you, Poe, the way I feel _right now_ is better than anything I’ve ever felt before.”

The warmth in Poe’s gut swelled to fill all of him, until he felt there should be beams of light shooting from his fingertips. There was only one thing he could do. He pulled Finn’s face close. But before his lips found Finn’s, he remembered. Finn was new to this. Poe had to slow down.

“Is this ok?” Poe whispered, so close that the tips of their noses brushed against each other. He heard Finn swallow, watched the skin move across his throat.

“Yes,” Finn whispered back. “More than ok.”

Poe fit his lips perfectly into the shape of Finn’s, as if this was what they had been made for. How foolish he had been all those years, using them for talking and eating and whatever else. Now, moving in a soft rhythm, drinking in the sweetness of Finn’s mouth, they had found their true purpose, and they would never feel the same again.

Poe felt Finn’s fingers weaving through his hair as his own hands dropped to Finn’s waist. Finn pressed his body closer, so that Poe nearly fell over backwards. It was then that Poe realized they had to stop. Now was not the time to go further than this. Finn was still so new. And besides, this was more than enough. Poe had meant what he said: this was everything. As difficult as it was, Poe stilled his lips and pulled back a few inches. He smiled and leaned their foreheads together so that Finn wouldn’t think he had done something wrong to make Poe stop.

“Finn,” he breathed, but he stopped himself from saying the words he wanted to say. It was too much. It was too fast. Then he thought, _Has Finn ever heard these words before?_ and he thought, _He deserves them._

“I love you, buddy,” Poe said. “I love you so much.”

He had heard Leia’s stories, and for a split second, he expected to hear Finn say _I know_. But this was not Leia’s story. This was all his, all Finn’s.

Silence settled in while Finn absorbed the words. There was too much in his eyes for Poe to read.

“I don’t really know what loving someone is supposed to be like,” Finn said quietly after a few moments. “But I do know that I don’t want anything other than you.”

No one but Finn would have said such a thing, and that made it better than the best answer Poe could imagine. He smiled so hard that his cheeks hurt, and he held Finn’s face in his hands, and in that moment, he cared about nothing else in the whole galaxy.  

…………………………………………………

Eventually, they looked up from each other and realized the room they stood in was a bedroom. Poe shoved the implications of that out of his mind immediately. It was less of a bedroom and more of a barracks, anyway. Four low beds on rickety frames lined the far wall. A small metal desk and chair had been shoved into a corner. There was no other furniture in the room.

Poe walked over to the bed nestled into the far right corner of the room and plopped down. The mattress was hard and the frame’s creaking was far from promising, but it would do just fine. He leaned back against the wall. Had he been this exhausted the whole time, or was this the result of his most guarded feelings exploding out of him all at once? He patted the bed beside him, and Finn joined him. Again the frame’s metal joints groaned, but the bed held up. Finn pulled Poe’s hand into his lap and laced their fingers together. A smile danced on Poe’s lips as his eyes began to droop shut. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he could just go to sleep, without the hours of stressing or fantasizing that usually came first. His head fell as he drifted closer to unconsciousness, and it landed on something warm and solid. _Finn’s shoulder_ , Poe thought, and even as mindfulness drained from his brain like a slow drip, he marveled at the fact that any of this was real.

The next thing he knew, his eyes were cracking open to see the room illuminated by pale early-morning sunlight streaming in through windows set high in the wall that he hadn’t noticed before. At some point in the night, he had lain down and settled into the bed properly. He was surprised to find Finn nestled under the scratchy, threadbare blankets beside him, breathing deeply, still fast asleep. Their bodies were wedged together on the small mattress, and Poe’s arm rested across Finn’s waist. So, it hadn’t been a dream, then. They really had said all those things to each other. Poe smiled for what must have been the thousandth time in the past twenty-four hours.

Poe and Finn were both lying so that they faced the wall, and just then, a grunt from behind Poe startled him so badly that he nearly tumbled off the bed. He sat up and turned around as fast as he could with his body still half-asleep. On the bed beside them, one of the young technicians had flung herself out to cover every inch of her mattress. On the next bed over slept the other technician, and on the next slept C’ai. Poe’s whole team—the team he was supposed to be leading on a Resistance mission of constantly growing importance—was here in this room with him and Finn. He had left them last night without a single word of encouragement or strategizing about what they would do today. He had run off with Finn and fallen asleep, and they could all plainly see that. Poe felt not even the slightest trace of regret, but still, this would make for an uncomfortable situation.

Before he could expand on that thought, the door to the bedroom slid open, and the taller, bubblier of their new companions bounced into the room, already as chipper at this hour of the morning as she had been the day before.

“Rise and shine!” she exclaimed. “The sun’s up, and that means we’ve got to get moving before there are too many people up and about that might take note of us.”

Poe felt Finn stirring beside him as the rest of his team stretched and yawned and put feet on the floor.

“Good morning,” Poe said quietly, just for Finn.

“Morning,” Finn said around a yawn that cracked his mouth wide open. He rubbed his eyes to keep them open. “Is it just me or does it feel like we’ve been sleeping for days?”

“I know what you mean,” Poe said. “That’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had in ages.”

“I wonder why,” Finn said, smirking. He surprised Poe by leaning over and planting a quick kiss on his nose. The pleasant warm feeling returned to the pit of Poe’s stomach.

If the other three members of their team noticed what was going on—and it was impossible for them not to notice—they said nothing of it as all five of them rose from their beds and made their way to the main room of the house.

The two newest allies to the Resistance led the way as they set out, taking them again through back streets and alleyways. They heard the noise of a city waking, of engines starting and people bustling off to do their business, but the sounds were far away, and they ran into no one. Just as the sun left the horizon behind, they stepped out of Capital City and onto the same plain they had crossed the day before. Now it was swathed in crisp, clear morning light. It was somehow even more beautiful than it had been the day before. Especially from this angle, where there was no metropolitan backdrop, and the grass seemed to stretch on forever until it swelled to meet the sky.

Finn stopped in his tracks when he laid eyes on it. He didn’t say a word, just stood there and breathed deep, as if he could inhale the scene and make it a part of himself.

“You really love it here, don’t you?” Poe asked after several moments had passed. He had waved the rest of them on already—he and Finn could catch up later—and they were many feet ahead now.

“I love it everywhere,” Finn said absentmindedly.

Poe’s brows knit together as he tried to figure out what that was supposed to mean. Finn glanced at him and cracked a smile.

“I feel like I keep going on about this, but I really think the whole galaxy is so beautiful,” Finn said. “I loved Takodana, I loved D’Qar—I even loved Canto Bite until I found out what happens there.”

“You didn’t love Jakku,” Poe said.

“Pffft!” Finn said, as if removing a bad taste from his mouth. His whole face scrunched up like he had just seen something horrible and was trying not to get sick. “Now you’re just trying to ruin my good mood.”

Poe laughed. “I would never!”

He grabbed Finn’s hand—something he couldn’t stop doing now that he was allowed to—and pulled him further into the plain. The others were getting too far ahead now for Poe’s comfort. Honestly, none of this situation was to his comfort. He was supposed to be out in front, leading his team to where they needed to be. But now he didn’t even know where they were going. He felt useless and restless clambering blindly behind two people he didn’t even know. At least if he hung back with Finn, he could make the best of it.

“You know,” Finn said thoughtfully as they walked. “I love all—I mean, _most_ —of the places I’ve seen, but I bet Yavin 4 will be my favorite.”

“What makes you say that?” Poe asked.

“It’s the place that made you. It must be pretty incredible.”

Poe wanted simultaneously to kiss him and to run back to Capital City, jump on the first ship he found, and fly Finn to Yavin 4 right then and there. He could hardly remember what motivated him to keep moving forward, toward a shaky future in which either of them could die at any moment. At the end of the day, though, he could never forget what made this fight important, and he knew he would never run away from it. It was a nice thought, though— going somewhere far away to live a simple life with simple problems and simple pleasures, where he didn’t have to worry constantly about Finn’s safety.

Even as Poe thought this, they passed a spot where the grass had been beaten down, and two parallel scorch marks streaked the ground. This must have been where they had first met their new allies the day before, where—

“Hey!” Poe exclaimed, suddenly remembering that there had been other things to talk to Finn about besides the kiss. “Why didn’t you have your blaster yesterday?”

His tone was harsh and accusing, though he hadn’t exactly meant for it to be. Thinking again about that moment the day before, when he had been sure that Finn was about to be shot with no means of defense, awakened the same surge of panic in him. On second thought, maybe he did want to be harsh and accusatory about this.

“I told you, I didn’t want one,” Finn said.

There was that same maddening answer.

“What does that even mean?” He didn’t want to protect himself? Didn’t he care whether he lived or died? He had to care.

“I don’t like blasters,” Finn said.

“Finn, that doesn’t make any sense. I’ve seen you use a blaster. You’re damn good at it. Haven’t you been training with blasters your whole life?”

“Exactly!” Finn exploded at him. “My whole life! With the First Order!”

Poe stopped walking. If the others got too far ahead, oh well.

“You’re not with the First Order anymore, Finn,” Poe said gently.

Finn sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he spoke again, he didn’t sound angry. He just sounded tired.

“I know that,” he said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that since before I can remember, the same people who tortured and brainwashed me have been putting blasters in my hand and telling me shooting people is all I’m good for.”

“But don’t you see?” Poe said. “You can use that against them. They tried to make you into a killing machine, and you said no. Now the only people you’re shooting at is them.”

“I guess I just don’t like the idea of shooting at anyone.”

“Even the First Order?”

“There’s something Rose said to me on Crait that I’ve been thinking about a lot,” Finn said. “She said we’re not going to win by fighting what we hate. That’s what the First Order does. We’re going to win by saving what we love. Does what I’m saying make any sense?”

Poe thought about how his own outlook on life had shifted since he met Finn, how he had begun to dwell less on the war itself and more on what life would be like after they won. He thought about his mother and father, working so hard for so many years to take down the Empire so that their son could live in a world without it.

“Yeah,” Poe said. “It makes sense.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Finn said. “I still want to smash the entire First Order with my bare fists, and I’m going to keep fighting until I do. That’s why I’m here. But I don’t want to do it their way, and for me, that means no blaster.”

Poe nodded. He still didn’t understand the difference between using a blaster and, say, using the Force to throw plasma bolts back at someone, but to Finn, there was a difference, and that was all that mattered. There was so much about what Finn had gone through that Poe would never be able to understand, no matter how badly he wanted to or how hard he tried. All he could do was listen to Finn and support him.

“Well, hey, I guess you don’t need a blaster, anyway,” Poe said with a smile. “Seeing as you’re a Jedi now.”

“I wish people would stop calling me that,” Finn mumbled.

Poe’s face fell. He reached out to stroke Finn’s cheek with his thumb.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Poe asked. “What’s wrong?”

Finn cleared his throat, shook his head rapidly. He turned away from Poe and used a hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he stared out at the figures of their teammates shrinking in the distance.

“We better get going. Pretty soon we won’t be able to see them at all.”

With that, Finn took off jogging through the tall grass.

Poe was missing something, some hidden reason why Finn couldn’t accept the amazing thing he had unlocked inside himself. And now Finn was running away from him.

Poe followed shortly after him, but he gave Finn some distance. It felt wrong to be even a few feet away from him right now, but Poe knew Finn needed space to be alone with himself. So they both jogged on in silence until they caught up with the rest of their team.

 

Their two new allies led them out into the desert, where the sun bore down on them just as oppressively as it had the day before. Once they had been trudging up and down sand dunes for at least an hour, the thought occurred to Poe that they might run into the spot where the Falcon was parked. Instinctively, he panicked at the thought of their hiding spot being discovered by two strangers, regardless of how trustworthy they seemed. From then on, he paid more attention to where they were going. Really, he should have been paying attention all along, but he was so easily distracted when Finn was around.

Now, Finn kept himself removed from the rest of the group as they walked. He wore a grave expression on his face. Every few minutes, Poe would look over his shoulder to check on him as he walked alone, and any time their eyes met, Finn looked away immediately. It was clear that all this talk about him using the Force and being a Jedi was weighing on him. Poe wanted nothing more than to help shoulder the burden, but he didn’t know how.

After several hours of slogging through the sand, Poe realized that they must be nowhere near the Falcon. They would have run into it or at least seen it in the distance by now. That made one less thing he had to worry about, but there were still plenty more. His team, for instance. As he looked around at them all, he saw that they were fading. Sweat gleamed on every inch of exposed skin, drenched their hair, stuck their clothes to their backs. Their feet barely lifted out of the sand when they took a step.

“How much longer until we reach your base?” Poe asked their new companions. The words tore through his throat as if they had jagged edges, and he realized it had been far too long since he had had a drink of water.

“Just a couple more hours,” the taller one said sympathetically. “I know the journey can be a lot if you aren’t used to it. Should we take a break?”

“I think that might be a good idea,” Poe said. He addressed his team. “Listen. Get off your feet for a few minutes. Drink some water. We’ve got this.”

He reached around into his own knapsack and pulled out his canteen. He gulped down water until his throat stopped burning. Then he walked over to where Finn sat in the sand and collapsed next to him.

“Still think Lothal is beautiful?” Poe asked.

Finn huffed a laugh.

“Maybe not this specific part,” he said.

Poe offered him the canteen. Finn looked at him with a strange, almost confused look in his eyes before taking it.

“Thanks,” Finn said. He lifted the canteen to his lips and drank until it was empty. When he handed it back to Poe, he said, “Wow. I guess I needed that.”

“I got you,” Poe said.

“Yeah. You do. Huh.” That same strange look narrowed his eyes, furrowed his brow again.

“What is it?” Poe asked.

“I’m just…” Finn took a deep breath. “Still getting used to people taking care of me.”

Poe’s heart swelled. He reached over and took Finn’s hand.

“You’ve got the rest of your life to get used to it, buddy.”

For the rest of their journey through the unrelenting desert of Lothal, Finn and Poe walked hand-in-hand. Finn was quiet most of the time, but, Poe thought, at least he wasn’t alone.

Just as the sun began to fall from its peak in the sky, they reached a village standing amidst the sand dunes. It was the first trace of civilization they had seen since leaving Capital City that morning. It was a small village, comprised of a cluster of shacks lining one dusty street that ended at the entrance to a massive warehouse that looked entirely out of place. Its metal walls were solid and sturdy. They seemed much newer than the grimy stone walls of the village’s other buildings. People bustled from building to building, and they, too, looked out of place. A village this small shouldn’t have had such a large population. Poe felt the electric energy running through the whole place like a current, and he realized with a shock of nostalgia that it reminded him of their own base on D’Qar.

“Welcome,” said the taller of their new companions when she turned to find every member of Poe’s team transfixed on the village, “to our Resistance.”    

The faces of at least a dozen different species turned to stare at Poe and his team as they wove through the swarm of people moving to and from the warehouse at the end of the street. Conversations stopped when they approached, and whispers followed in their wake. It was clear that everyone here knew each other and recognized immediately that there were strangers in their midst. It felt odd to Poe, the way their roles had reversed. Only hours ago he had been worried about strangers finding Leia and the Falcon, and now here he was, strolling unannounced into someone else’s base of operations. He tried to keep a pleasant, friendly expression on his face, but he knew from experience that sometimes, that was more suspicious than an open scowl.

“Relax,” Finn said quietly beside him. He squeezed Poe’s hand. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. You’re Poe Dameron. You’ve got this.”

Poe slowly let out the breath he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding.

“Right. Yeah. Thanks.”

How did Finn know exactly what he was feeling? Was that a Force thing, or did Finn just know him that well? Either way, knowing he had Finn’s vote of confidence melted Poe’s nerves. When they finally reached the door to the warehouse, he was ready for whatever awaited them inside.

“Wait here,” said the shorter of their new allies. She punched a number into a keypad set in the wall, and the door slid open. Before she and her sister stepped inside and the door shut behind them, Poe caught a second’s glimpse of the inside. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Mountains of crates, shelves full of fuel pods, and—had that been a hangar door set into the opposite wall? And most importantly, there were people everywhere. At least as many as they had already seen outside. If they were really who they said they were, if they really wanted to join Leia’s fight against the First Order…the Resistance just might stand a chance after all.

The door slid open again, and the sisters were back. They led Poe and his team inside, walking through row after row of any kind of supplies Poe could think of. Blasters, food rations, proton torpedoes—and the shelves towered so high that he felt like he was back in Capital City, sneaking through alleyways between skyscrapers.

They kept walking until they reached the back of the building, where it seemed a command center had been tucked into the corner. Several people stood around a huge table that glowed with a holo-map of Lothal’s surface. Panels of screens surrounded them on all sides.

As Poe and his team approached, a human woman with dark skin and a lined face stepped away from the table. The outfit she wore looked more like a mechanic’s suit than anything else, but she carried with her an aura of leadership. Poe understood at a glance that she was in charge here.

“I hear that you are part of the Resistance,” she said, addressing Poe.

“I hear the same about you,” he said.

“We do what we can from our little rock on the edge of the galaxy.”

“It looks like you’ve done quite a bit here, General,” Poe said, gesturing around the massive room.

She shook her head sharply. “Captain. Not General. We don’t have a general here.”

“Why not?” Poe asked in confusion. It didn’t really matter to him what she called herself, but it seemed like an odd choice.

“Because all of us here serve under General Organa.” She met Poe’s eyes with a solemn look. “Just like you.”

A smile spread across Poe’s face. That was all it took to win him over.

“Hell yeah you do,” he said.

He introduced the rest of his team and explained their purpose on Lothal. When he told the Lothal Resistance members that Leia Organa herself was on-planet, their eyes went wide. They explained, again, that they would have come to provide aid on Crait if only they had a navy. There were no shipyards on Lothal, they explained, and there was no way for them to buy a ship here without raising questions. They apologized profusely that the sisters had attempted to steal Poe’s ship and assured him that no matter how desperate their movement was, they would never condone such actions. Their Captain and other leaders talked for a long time, detailing how they had built this base from the ground so they would be ready if the First Order ever came back to Lothal. After about an hour, Poe decided it was time to call Leia. He could imagine the look on her face when she saw all of this and found out she had been right about Lothal.

“What are our coordinates?” he asked the Lothalites, so that he could send their location to Leia. When they told him, he wrinkled his brow in confusion.

“Wait a second…” he looked at Finn, at his other teammates, and they all looked just as confused. “I’m not crazy, right? This is where we sent Rey and Rose.”

Finn’s entire body froze. “Yes,” he said stiffly. “It definitely is.”

“Has anyone other than us been around here in the past couple of days?” Poe asked, panic rising in his stomach. “Two women, travelling alone? They would have thought this was a farming village. They would have asked to buy food.”

“No,” said the Lothal Captain. “We keep scouts on a wide perimeter around the village, and we haven’t seen anyone.”

Poe forgot all the excitement he had felt since the moment they stepped foot in the village. Rey and Rose were missing. Rey and Rose. He had sent them out alone, and if something had happened to them, it was his fault. Why had he been so stupid and jealous? Guilt churned in his stomach as he remembered all the times he wished Rose would disappear.

“We have to go,” he said to the Lothal Resistance leaders, but he had already turned away from them. He grabbed Finn by the arm as he hurried back the way they had come. He didn’t check to see if the rest of his team was following.

“We’re gonna find them,” he said to Finn as they half-walked, half-ran to the exit. “I promise you, we’re gonna find them.”

“Of course we are,” Finn said. He put on a determined face, but a current of fear ran through his words.

They burst through the warehouse door the second it slid open, but Poe kept going. He pulled Finn along with him as he walked all the way back down the busy village street. This time he didn’t notice the stares or the whispers of the people they passed. He didn’t stop until they were well away from the village and all its noise.

He planted his hands squarely on Finn’s shoulders.

“Everything’s gonna be ok,” he said.

“Ok,” Finn said.

“I have a plan.”

“Ok.”

“I’m gonna call Leia and tell her to come get us in the Falcon…”

“Ok.”

“And you’re going to find Rey and Rose,” Poe finished.

Finn blinked. “I don’t know where they are.”

Poe knew that what he was about to say was a sensitive subject for Finn, so he chose his words carefully.

“You and Rey have a connection,” Poe said. “Use it.”

Finn was starting to get frustrated. “What are you talking about? Use it how?”

“The Force, Finn. Use the Force.”

They stood in silence, staring at each other.

“I can’t,” Finn said quietly.

“Sure you can! I’ve seen you do it.”

“That wasn’t… Look, I don’t even know how I did that.”

“You think Rey knew what she was doing the first time she used the Force? Or Luke Skywalker? Or Leia? I’ve heard enough stories to know you don’t have to know what you’re doing to be—”

“Don’t call me a Jedi!” Finn snapped. “I’m not! I’m not like Rey or Luke Skywalker or Leia or any of the rest of them. I’m not special. I’m just a stormtrooper who got out.”

“Finn—” Poe didn’t even know where to begin. He wished he could make Finn see himself the way everyone else did. He was the most special person in the galaxy.

“You’re wrong,” Poe said. Finn objected immediately, but Poe stopped him. He held Finn’s face in hands. “Shhh, listen. I know you don’t believe me. That’s ok. You’ll see eventually. But until then, take it from me. You’re wrong. You are so special. And you can use the Force. Deep down, you know that. Remember what you said to me? That it felt like you’ve been waiting to use it forever? Why are you shutting that out?”

“I just don’t think I can do it,” Finn said, sounding utterly defeated. All the energy had drained from him. “I can’t be a hero like them. That’s not who I am.”

“So don’t be a hero like them!” Poe said. “Be a hero like only you can. I mean, Finn, that’s what you’ve been doing since I met you! Maybe you don’t see it, but it’s true. You’re exactly what heroes are made of.”

“Poe, I don’t—”

“Try. Just try. It can’t hurt. C’mon, search your feelings or whatever. Prove to yourself that I’m right.”

Finn stared at him, but Poe could tell his thoughts were a thousand lightyears away. Slowly, Finn’s face shifted. Hardened.

“Ok,” he said. “I’ll try. For Rey and Rose.”

“There you go, buddy!” Poe said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Finn stepped a few feet away so that he could focus. He fell to his knees on the ground, buried his hands in the sand, and closed his eyes. His breaths became deep and even.

Meanwhile, Poe called Leia on his comm.

“Come in, Starbird,” he said. “We need a pick-up.”

“Poe?” Leia’s staticky voice said through the speaker. “What’s happening?”

“Rey and Rose are missing,” he said. “We’ve reached their destination, but they aren’t here.”

“Why are you all the way out there?”

“No time to explain right now. We’ve gotta find them before something happens to them.”

“How will we know where to find them?” Leia asked.

Poe’s eyes fell on Finn, still kneeling in the sand, his face wrinkled with concentration. 

“We’re working on it,” Poe said. “See you in a few.”

He watched Finn warily. His lips were moving, as if he was mumbling something under his breath. Poe had no idea how to tell if it was working or if something had gone horribly wrong.

Suddenly, Finn shot up from the ground in a spray of sand.

“I feel her,” he said in amazement. “I feel Rey.”

Relief swept through Poe’s body, and he smiled.

“See! I told you! You’re amazing, Finn!”

But then Finn’s face fell. He squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain.

“I feel something else, too,” Finn said, his voice strained. “Something…big. And powerful. And…I don’t know. Whatever it is, I feel like it’s trying to pull me in.”

His eyes flew open wide. Poe’s heart beat too fast, and his chest felt like it was restricting.

“What’s wrong?” Poe asked.

“It’s got Rey,” Finn said. He locked eyes with Poe. “I think they’re in trouble.”

…………………………………………………

As soon as the Falcon landed and the boarding ramp lowered, Finn ran on board. Poe followed closely behind him. The rest of his team made it on board, too, though he hadn’t noticed them catching up. If he was honest, he had forgotten about them. That kept happening when he was with Finn. He would have to work on it, but for now, he just hoped Leia wouldn’t notice.

“What is going on?” Leia asked when they met her in the main hold. “I don’t like the Falcon being exposed like this.”

“Don’t worry,” Poe said. He had forgotten that she still had no idea what they had discovered here. “Everyone here is on our side.”

“What do you—”

“We don’t have time for this! Something’s got Rey!” Finn burst out, surprising all of them. “We have to go right now.”

“Ok, buddy, come on,” Poe said, grabbing his arm again and leading him down the corridor to the cockpit. He shooed the pilot away and took her seat. Finn sat beside him, though how he was sitting down, Poe had no idea. He was practically vibrating with anxious energy.

“It’s gonna be ok, I promise,” Poe said while he checked everything and made sure they were ready to fly. It wasn’t a promise he could make, not really, because he had no idea if anything would be ok. But he couldn’t stand to see Finn like this. “All right, we’re good to go. Where is she?”

Finn pointed out the viewport, to the left.

“That way,” he said.

“No, I mean, specifically, where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Finn said, shaking his head. “It’s not like I have her coordinates or anything. I just know that she’s somewhere that way.”

Poe didn’t know what to do. If he took off in a general direction with no idea where he was going, they would never find Rey and Rose. He could get off course. He could pass right over them without seeing them from the air. Finn could correct him if he made a mistake, but how long would that take? And according to Finn, they had no time to lose.

Poe had an idea that, despite the circumstances, put a smile on his face.

“Why are you smiling?” Finn demanded.

“Because,” Poe said. “You’re gonna fly.”

“I don’t know how to fly.”

“Sure you do! You learned from the best.”

“Poe,” Finn said, his voice desperate. “Please. We have to go.”

“I know that! And you’re the only one who knows where we’re going. It’s gotta be you.”

“I’ve never done it before.”

Poe looked him square in the face. “You’ve done a whole lot of things in the past twenty-four hours that you’ve never done before, Finn.”

Finn exhaled, nodding. “Ok. Yeah. Ok. Let’s do it.”

Poe jumped up from the pilot’s seat. “That’s the spirit! You’ve got this, buddy!”

Once in the pilot’s seat, Finn took the controls. His leg bounced wildly, so Poe reached over and put a hand on his knee to steady him. Even now, it amazed him that he could do something like this without Finn jerking away from his touch.

“I’ve got this,” Finn repeated to himself as the Falcon thrummed to life beneath them. He eased on to the controls and slowly, carefully, they lifted off the ground.

The shadow of a smile touched Finn’s face.

“I’m flying,” he said.

He lifted them higher into the air and pressed on in the direction he had pointed out. A sense of elation overcame Poe. Finn was doing so well. Maybe the Force was helping him, or maybe he was just good at everything he did, but either way, they glided smoothly through the air without a hitch. Poe never would’ve believed someone could be this good after one lesson. But of course, this wasn’t just someone, it was Finn. He was special.

After a few minutes, they could see something massive and cone-shaped piercing the horizon.

“Whoa,” Finn said. For the first time since he had taken the controls, the Falcon bobbed in the air. “That’s…whoa.” They bobbed again, more violently this time.

“Are you ok?” Poe asked. 

“Fine,” Finn said. He shook his head as if to clear it. “That’s it. That…that mountain. Or whatever. That’s the thing that’s pulling at me.”

Poe’s stomach dropped. “Can you still feel her? Is she ok? Is it hurting you?”

“No, it’s not hurting me,” Finn said in a daze. “I don’t think it wants to hurt me. It doesn’t…it doesn’t feel so bad anymore.”

The closer they got to the not-mountain, the more relaxed Finn seemed.

“I think they’re ok,” he said when they were nearly on top of the thing. He looked at Poe suddenly. “But. Um. I just realized I have no idea how to land.”

Poe laughed. Of course he had forgotten to teach Finn how to land. That was his least favorite part. It always meant the flight was over and he had to get back to the rest of the world.

“I’ll take it from here,” Poe said. “But you were perfect.”

They swapped seats again, and Poe explained everything to Finn as he did it. He pointed out the lever for the landing claw and showed him exactly how much to pull back on the controls. Finn watched and listened attentively, just as he had before. It seemed almost like they were still in that first lesson, like none of the past few days had happened at all. Like it had all been a dream.

Then they touched down, and the spell was broken. Finn smiled at Poe. He still buzzed with energy, but now it felt closer to excitement than anxiety. He leaned over and planted a kiss on Poe’s cheek before he hopped up and jogged out of the cockpit.

Poe touched the warm spot on his cheek and smiled to himself. No, he thought, it definitely hadn’t been a dream.

Poe stayed back and waited by the Falcon while Finn ran off to get Rey and Rose.

“They’re so close!” Finn said “I can practically hear their voices.”

Poe watched him go, with only a hint of worry that things would be different when he returned. When the other two people Finn loved more than anything in the world were there, and it wasn’t just the two of them anymore.

When Finn came back around the curve of the mountain, Rey and Rose—both all in one piece—walked behind him. As the three of them got closer, Poe realized that Rey and Rose’s hands were laced together. He busted out laughing. Apparently he and Finn weren’t the only ones who had gotten completely distracted on this mission.

“You had an eventful time, I see,” he said when they reached the boarding ramp. He made eye contact with Rose, maybe for the first time since Crait. He tried to fit as much as he could into that gaze—how sorry he was for treating her like an enemy, how stupid he felt for acting like a child—and she smiled at him in return. It was a start.

“You could say that,” Rey said. She smiled, too. And Finn smiled. And Poe couldn’t have stopped smiling if he wanted to. Was this what the Resistance would be now? A group of people so happy and full of love that they all they did was stand around and smile at each other?

Maybe that didn’t sound so bad.

“I always knew, you know,” Poe said as he led them down the main corridor to the engineering bay/strategy room for their debriefing with Leia.

“Knew what?” Rey asked.

“That you like women,” Poe said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Because, as far as he knew, it _was_ the most obvious thing in the world. He had taken it for granted since the first time he met her.

Rey stopped dead in the middle of the corridor. Poe turned to look at her. She was quiet for a long time.

“Well, you could’ve told me,” she said, finally.

“What! You didn’t know?” Finn said. Poe laughed. Apparently he hadn’t been the only one who thought it was established information.

“No! Did you?” Rey said.

“Of course! I think everyone did. I mean, Rey, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s pretty obvious.”

Rey looked around at all of them in utter disbelief.

“You’re so cute,” Rose said, shaking her head. She made eye contact with Rey, and the look in their faces sent warmth spreading through Poe’s gut. He was shocked at how happy it made him to see them happy. He cared for them more than he had ever expected to.

When they reached the strategy room, Leia leapt from her seat and bounded across the room to embrace Rey and Rose in turn. Last she heard, they were possibly in terrible danger.

After only a few minutes of explanations about what had happened on the mission—or rather, why both halves had gotten so off-track—Leia dismissed them. They had all had a long day, she said, and they should all go get some rest.

As Poe turned to leave, she placed a hand on his arm.  

“Not you,” she said quietly. He sucked in a deep breath. There were any number of things she could reprimand him for now that they were alone.

“Your other team members told me everything while you were flying,” she said. His stomach dropped. Everything…like how he had been a terrible Captain? How he had entirely ignored them for the majority of the past two days? He turned to look at Leia, and tears gleamed in her eyes.

“Is it true?” she said, her voice rough, almost a whisper. “They have everything we need to rebuild?”

“Oh,” Poe said. This wasn’t what he had been expecting, but it reached out and grabbed his heart. He felt a lump in his throat as tears swelled in his own eyes. “Yes. You wouldn’t believe what they’ve managed to do all the way out here on their own.”

“So it’s not over,” she said.

He shook his head, beaming.

“Not even close.”

They embraced, Leia squeezing him so tight that it hurt.

“Thank you, Poe,” she said. “We wouldn’t have made it this far without you.”

When he pulled back and looked at her, a complicated mix of emotions rose in him. Leia always reminded him of his mother, which brought with it the hollow stab of loss. There was guilt, too, over the many ways he felt he had let her down over the years. But mostly, right then, he felt proud. Proud of Leia for never giving up the fight, even after losing first her entire planet, then her own son, and her husband, and her brother. Proud that he got to know her and fight with her. And yes, proud that he himself was a person she valued and loved.

“You deserve it, you know,” she said, and for a second, Poe thought she had been reading his mind.

“I deserve what?”

She smirked. “The rookies still think a debrief means they have to tell me every little detail.”

Poe’s face burned.

“I’m sorry about all the stuff with Finn,” he blurted. “I really didn’t mean—”

“Don’t apologize! I’m serious. You deserve it. I’m happy for you.”

“Oh,” Poe said, but his cheeks still felt white-hot. “Thanks.”

“It’s nice to see you thinking about something other than the fight for once. Even I had Han.”

“Yeah, well,” Poe said, remembering what Finn had told him, “if we aren’t fighting to save the people we love, what are we fighting for?”

“Exactly,” Leia said.

They began to discuss their plans moving forward. For tonight, she said, they would do no more. No one was mentally or physically prepared to establish the next stage of the Resistance right now. Going forward, they would have to find ships and make sure all the Lothalites were trained properly and figure out what the First Order’s next move was and a thousand other things. There was much work still to be done. But both Poe and Leia were confident that they had what it took to do it all.

“Now go,” Leia said after a while. “I know there’s someone else you’d rather be talking to.”

Poe smiled, and heat rushed into his cheeks once again. This was going to take some getting used to.

He left the strategy room and went in search of—Leia was always right, after all—Finn. From down the corridor, Poe heard his voice coming from the main hold. Before he turned the corner, he realized what Finn was talking about and stopped, listening.

“It was great,” Finn was saying. “I mean, obviously it was great, but that’s not even enough to describe it. It’s like, one second, I thought he was gonna die, and the next thing I know I wake up with my head in his lap, and then—well, you know. I didn’t think I would ever get to do that. With him. I didn’t think he felt that way about me.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Rey said. “He’s obviously obsessed with you.”

“Whatever,” Finn said. “I’m just glad I know now. Is it weird that I found out I can use the Force literally yesterday, and I still feel like Poe is the best and most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me?”

Poe bit his lip. Surely he would explode if he listened to any more of this. He couldn’t take it. He took a few steps back down the corridor so he could turn the corner as if he hadn’t heard anything at all.

“It’s not weird,” Rey was saying to Finn when Poe walked in, a smile plastered across her face. “I know exactly what you mean.” She turned her smile to Rose.

Poe slid into the booth beside Finn, who quietly settled in closer to Poe’s side.

They sat like that, all together, for a long time. Rey told them all about the Jedi temple and seeing Luke Skywalker and building her lightsaber. She said that, since they would be staying on Lothal, Finn could probably build one, too. The two of them talked about training together, about using Master Skywalker’s old texts to pave their own path through the Force. Finn seemed much more comfortable being called a Jedi now, even if he wouldn’t say it himself just yet.

Soon, Rey’s head began to nod, then Finn’s, and they decided it was time for bed. Rose pulled Rey by the hand to the crew’s quarters, but Poe held Finn back.

“Hey,” Poe said, “think you can stay awake a little longer?”

“I guess I can,” Finn said, a smile growing on his lips. “What did you have in mind?”

Poe led him into the cockpit. It was completely dark except for the light of the stars glowing softly from above.

“Somebody has to fly the ship back to base,” Poe said. “I thought maybe you would want to do it.”

“Oh,” Finn said, looking disappointed for some reason. “That’s not what I thought you were gonna say.”

Poe furrowed his eyebrows. “What did you think I—”

Finn smacked into him before he could say another word, so hard he had to brace himself against the back of the pilot’s seat to keep from falling over. Their mouths found each other, lips moving in a rhythm that had already become so comfortable. Finn’s fingers moved through Poe’s floppy curls, and Poe used his free hand to stroke Finn’s cheek, his neck, his chest.

This time, it was Finn who stopped just before they went a step further, but they stayed close, holding each other, breathing in each other’s air with deep, heavy breaths.

“So, um,” Poe said after a length of time that was impossible to measure. “Do you wanna fly now?”

Finn laughed, and they were so close that Poe could taste it.

“Yeah, sure,” Finn said.

He sat down in the pilot’s chair, and Poe sat beside him. He watched as Finn switched on the engine, prepped for take-off, and finally lifted them into the air. The ship moved as smooth and easy as it had the first time Finn flew. It only made sense, Poe thought, that the love of his life should be a natural pilot.

As they glided through the deep blue night, stars streaming past overhead, Poe thought, _This could be my life forever_. Him and Finn and the stars, on Yavin 4 or wherever else they wanted to go.

Poe swiveled his chair and leaned until his head rested on Finn’s shoulder—because he wanted to touch him, because he could—and he said, “When the war is over, this is all I want to do.”

Finn could’ve said _But the war is so far from over_ or _We might not both survive_. But he didn’t.

Instead, he said, “Of course this is what we’ll do.”

And Poe believed him, and that was that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's all folks! sorry it got so long! i really didn't mean for it to. i wanted to give the gays everything they want, and the gays want a lot of things. i hope you enjoyed reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it!
> 
> you can come yell at me at @kidgorgeousjr on twitter if you want!

**Author's Note:**

> part II will be the same time period/events but from poe's perspective!! stay tuned!!
> 
> you can come yell at me at @kidgorgeousjr on twitter if you want!!


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